Found 48 posts tagged as "Theatre Reviews"
New in theatres this week: Japan's famed Studio Ghibli once again demonstrates why it's the world's top animation studio, Nicolas Cage offers his bi-weekly reminder that there's no role that he won't turn down, and Star Trek actor Chris Pine presents a compelling argument for why he recently fired his agent of nine years via e-mail.
New in theatres this week: For women who insist on celebrating Valentine's Day by dragging their significant other to a cheesy date movie, there's The Vow, a Nicholas Sparks-like romance that unites the star of Sparks' The Notebook (Rachel McAdams) with the star of Sparks' Dear John (Channing Tatum). For those who would rather celebrate Valentine Day's with car chases and gun fights, there's Safe House, a gritty action thriller starring Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds. And for people who absolutely hate Valentine's Day and everything it stands for, there's We Need to Talk About Kevin, a deeply unsettling psychological drama about the troubled relationship between a mother and her deranged school shooter son.
New in theatres this week: Daniel Radcliffe, Abbie Cornish, and a group of teenagers with superpowers star in a bunch of movies that football fans will probably have no interest in seeing.
New in theatres this week: Liam Neeson battles wolves onscreen, animal rights activists offscreen; 9/11 truther Daniel Sunjata appeases our Illuminati overlords by starring in a Katherine Heigl romantic comedy; and the searing Iranian state-sponsored drama A Separation proves that even the crazy Ahmadinejad regime is occasionally capable of making sensible decisions.
In her big screen debut, retired mixed martial arts star Gina Carano squares off against Angelina Jolie, Kate Beckinsale, George Lucas, and Lord Voldemort, and emerges triumphant.
On a superficial level, A Dangerous Method is the last thing you'd expect from director David Cronenberg. Set mostly in Zurich and Vienna between 1904 and 1913 and featuring the same attention to period detail that you'd expect from a Merchant-Ivory production, the film seems light years away from the dark, nightmarish worlds of Cronenberg's early bodily-mutation-themed horror movies (Videodrome, The Fly). But upon further inspection, A Dangerous Method could be Cronenberg's most Cronenbergian movie to date — a fascinating account of the birth of psychoanalysis which makes explicit many of the themes which lurked under the surface of Cronenberg's earlier work. For anyone still baffled by Crash or Naked Lunch, A Dangerous Method should clarify things immensely.
The distribution rights to The Devil Inside were purchased by Paramount under the assumption that it would go on to become the next Paranormal Activity. It's easy to understand why Paramount would think this. Like Paranormal Activity, The Devil Inside is a gimmicky, micro-budget, faux-documentary horror film that relies heavily on offscreen space and extremely primitive special effects. The only major difference between the two movies is that Paranormal Activity had a jump-out-of-your-seat moment every 5-10 minutes, and The Devil Inside has a jump-out-of-your-seat moment every 45 minutes. It should be noted that the running time of The Devil Inside is 83 minutes. You do the math.
Much has been made of the fact that Steven Spielberg has had two movies come out within five days of each other, first The Adventures of Tintin on the 21st, and now War Horse on Christmas Day. As it turns out, this isn't quite accurate — Spielberg has actually had three movies come out this week. Although it doesn't come advertised as such, War Horse is really two different movies in one. And how very different the two movies are. The first part is a delightfully simple and old fashioned children's movie about the strong emotional bond between a boy and his pet that could've been made during the 1940s. Think of what Lassie would have been like had it been directed by John Ford, and you'll get the idea. The second part is a brutal and harrowing war movie which, while not as violent as Saving Private Ryan, is every bit as psychologically grueling. Taken individually, both movies are stunning and easily rank among Spielberg's best. Packaged together, they make for a slightly awkward combination.
What Let Me In (2010) was to the Swedish language Let the Right One In (2008), David Fincher's Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is to the Swedish language Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. With only a few minor exceptions, the new movie is basically a shot by shot remake of the old one. In some instances, the minor changes have brought about minor improvements. For example, the new movie is slightly more stylish and expensive-looking than the original — which, given that it is a $100 million production from one of the great visual stylists of contemporary cinema, is sort of to be expected. In other ways, the changes are for the worse. You'd think that the director of Zodiac and the writer of Schindler's List would be slightly more adept at condensing a 600 page book than a group of Swedish/Danish unknowns, but the American movie isn't nearly as coherent or as elegantly told as the Swedish original. If you haven't read Stieg Larsson's novel or seen the Swedish version, you may want to bring a pad and a pencil to the theatre and keep a flowchart. There hasn't been a mainstream movie this difficult to follow since at least Syriana or Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.
Whatever they paid Tom Cruise to appear in M:I4, it wasn't nearly enough. As every poster, trailer, TV spot, and behind-the-scenes featurette has made clear, there's a scene in the film in which Tom Cruise (and not a stunt double) dangles from the top of the Burj Khalifa skyscraper, the world's tallest building. But what the publicity material fails to convey is that the sequence goes on for a dizzying, terrifying, and ultimately exhilarating 10 minutes, and that the distance between the Burj Khalifa's parking lot and 100th floor is a lot more pronounced in IMAX than it is on a computer monitor. In an age where most action scenes involve epic doses of CGI pyrotechnics, the skyscraper stunt is refreshingly simple and straightforward — just an actor, a building, and a camera — and it alone is worth the price of admission. I've never been skydiving, but now I feel that maybe I have.
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