What to say about a horror movie in which murderous antics of a bladed-carjack-wielding psychopath are infinitely less scary than the vicious infighting among a bunch of catty college seniors? There is enough campy ridiculousnessContinue reading
Category: Mainstream U.S. Cinema
Extract (Mike Judge, 2009)
Like his other films, Judge’s new comedy about the nightmares of middle management and suburban malaise invariably hinges on a wonderfully bizarre mixture of misanthropy and sensitivity. Although it finds myriad ways to mock idiots,Continue reading
Taking Woodstock (Ang Lee, 2009)
Lee’s behind-the-scenes portrait of Woodstock is, quite literally, all over the place. At times a vibrant and sympathetic portrait of the counterculture’s most visible evocation of the power of peace, love, and music, it isContinue reading
The Final Destination (David R. Ellis, 2009)
The fourth entry in the almost 10-year-old horror series is really no different from the previous three, except that it is packaged in shiny digital 3-D and eschews a numerical affix in favor of theContinue reading
Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)
Although Tarantino’s revisionist war fantasy is clearly playing off the historically inaccurate, but gratuitously satisfying WWII exploitation flicks of the ’60s and ’70s, his continual emphasis on dialogue as opposed to action suggests that he’sContinue reading
Julie & Julia (Nora Ephron, 2009)
Awash in culinary imagery, Ephron’s bifurcated dramedy is about the romance of food and the painstaking but ultimately rewarding nature of its preparation (it’s enough to make you want to run out, purchase some LeContinue reading
(500) Days of Summer (Marc Webb, 2009)
This unexpectedly moving romantic comedy, which coyly wraps its moments of sharp-edged truth in a comfortable blanket of indie-film quirk, is built on a clever temporal structure that whips us back and forth through theContinue reading
Funny People (Judd Apatow, 2009)
His third film finds Apatow stretching for maturity, and to his credit he has made a complex tragic-comic-dramedy that makes excellent use of Adam Sandler’s aggressively infantile screen presence, in this case rewriting it asContinue reading
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (David Yates, 2009)
Despite having a longer running time and a shorter source novel than its predecessor, this sixth entry in the now eight-party film series still feels narratively awkward at times and loses huge chunks of J.K.Continue reading
Brüno (Larry Charles, 2009)
Sacha Baron Cohen’s follow-up to Borat is another aggressive experiment in mockumentary-style social comedy, this time featuring Cohen as the flamboyantly gay Austrian fashionista of the title. Both hilarious and appalling, the film is deeplyContinue reading