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THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON 3 stars
 by Lew Irwin                     View Film Profile     
Critics all seem to agree that The Twilight Saga: New Moon delivers what it is supposed to deliver -- in the words of Elizabeth Weitzman, in the New York Daily News, "swooning romance, PG-13 thrills, and enough sharp cheekbones and shirtless boys to carry any adolescent over to the next installment." Few of them even attempt to appraise the movie for its artistic quality, the apparent thinking being, "Why bother?" Hence, Kyle Smith's hilarious review in the New York Post, which begins: "Twilight, which was about a girl and a vampire who don't hook up, is totally different from The Twilight Saga: New Moon, which is about a girl, a vampire and a werewolf who don't hook up. And it's not at all like the next sequel, in which a girl, a vampire, a werewolf and a mummy fail to find romance, nor the one after that, in which the girl gets unfriended by all of the above plus the Invisible Man and King Kong -- yet finds her heart aflutter when she befriends the Bride of Frankenstein." And Mick LaSalle solves the critic's dilemma in assessing the movie by observing that it's really not a movie at all. "This is a pop culture phenomenon," he writes, "some weird early 21st century aberration, our equivalent of the hula hoop or dancing the Charleston on a biplane's wing. In the future, people will watch this second installment of "The Twilight Saga" and think, 'What was that?'" Clearly, there's not a teenage heart beating among any of the critics. Roger Ebert comments in the Chicago Sun-Times that the charisma of stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart "is by Madame Tussaud." (He has apparently not witnessed any of the teenage hysteria that accompanies their every move.) On the other hand, Roger Moore in the Orlando Sentinel concludes that the sequel is "more polished" than the original, "and we get the sense that even though a guy directed it [unlike Twilight], he wants the mostly-female fanbase to revel in the overheated romance, the blood-enforced chastity and the sacrifices this toothy Romeo-and-Juliet tale serves up." And Peter Howell in the Toronto Star dishes out quite a bit of praise to the filmmakers: "They well serve an evolving and involving love saga that gives us a lot more to chew on than the typical teen romance," he writes.


FANTASTIC MR. FOX 4 stars
 by Lew Irwin                     View Film Profile     
The stop-motion animated Fantastic Mr. Fox, with a voice cast that includes George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe and Jason Schwartzman, received enthusiastic reviews from national critics and those in Los Angeles and New York, where the film opened over the weekend. Directed by Wes Anderson from the Roald Dahl children's book, the film looks rather primitive compared with today's state-of-the-art 3D computer-animated features, the critics agree, while also observing that may be part of its charm. Indeed, Lou Lumenick in the New York Post described it as "a retro marvel." None of the critics appeared to be put off at all by the unrefined imagery. "Once you adjust to its stop-and-start rhythms and its scruffy looks, you can appreciate its wit, its beauty and the sly gravity of its emotional undercurrents," wrote A.O. Scott in the New York Times. Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News escalated the praise, calling the movie, "a visual treasure that successfully blends deadpan quirkiness with a wry realism rarely seen in any film, let alone one for children." In USA Today Claudia Puig somewhat reticently concluded that Anderson renders Dahl's story as "a sometimes witty, if odd, cartoon for all ages." Actually, several critics suggested it may not be a movie for children at all. Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times called it "ultrasophisticated," adding that it "does more than occupy its own particular space between the worlds of childhood and adults. It provides a pleasantly cerebral experience, exhilarating and fizzy, that goes to your head like too much Champagne."


PIRATE RADIO 3.5 stars
 by Lew Irwin                     View Film Profile     
Like the little off-shore pirate radio stations playing rock 'n' roll that dared to compete against the massive radio domination of the staid BBC in the 1960s, Pirate Radio debuts against the incalculable might of the $260-million apocalyptic flick 2012 this week. The critics, for the most part, love it. "It skips by like a much-loved old LP," writes Roger Moore in the Orlando Sentinel. "The film makes for easy viewing and easier listening," says Manohla Dargis in the New York Times, one of several critics who praise the choice of '60s music featured in the movie (and Claudia Puig in USA Today recommends that audiences "stick around through the end credit sequence, which features an array of album covers.") Kyle Smith in the New York Post notes that writer/director Richard Curtis, who wrote Four Weddings and a Funeral, "has dropped another bright joy-bomb that explodes in every direction with rock classics used in surprisingly direct and literal ways." On the other hand, Steven Rea in the Philadelphia Inquirer accuses Curtis of taking a potentially "great story" about the pirate stations and turning it "into an aggressively irritating floating frat-party romp." And Peter Howell concludes in the Toronto Star: "This film doesn't know whether it wants to be a comedy or a drama. By the time it finally reaches its Titanic-style conclusion, you probably won't care."


2012 3 stars
 by Lew Irwin                     View Film Profile     
2012 is not a disaster. That's one thing critics, for the most part, agree on -- to various degrees. Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times even goes so far as to call it "the mother of all disaster movies" -- largely because the movie doesn't merely show a few recognizable landmarks being destroyed -- but the entire Earth. "You think you've seen end-of-the-world movies?" he remarks. "This one ends the world, stomps on it, grinds it up and spits it out." His conclusion: "The movie gives you your money's worth. Is it a masterpiece? No. Is it one of the year's best? No. Does Emmerich hammer it together with his elbows from parts obtained from the Used Disaster Movie Store? Yes. But is it about as good as a movie in this genre can be? Yes." Many reviewers note that it's a useless enterprise to try to critique the screenplay -- which is based on the premise that ancient Mayans forecast the end of the world on December 21, 2012 -- the final day of their calendar. (They apparently did not forecast the end of their own civilization, which occurred hundreds of years earlier.) That hasn't stopped others from zeroing in on the plot. Like Manohla Dargis in the New York Times, who comments, "Despite the frenetic action scenes, the movie sags, done in by multiple story lines that undercut one another," she writes. Claudia Puig in USA Today sums up: "The movie is an undeniable visual spectacle, but just as unequivocally a cheesy, ridiculous story." Lou Lumenick in the New York Post won't even grant that it's cheesy, calling it instead "pure Velveeta," -- but, ah, the spectacle. "About the only thing that's missing from 2012 (except sanity)," he writes, "is 3-D, IMAX and Sensurround. For those, I would gladly pay $20 a ticket." Noting that the movie reportedly cost $260 million to make, Elizabeth Weitzman writes in the New York Daily News: "All that money can buy some jaw-dropping special effects, but not, it seems, a script worth a dime." Still, Tom Maurstad in the Dallas Morning News thinks it was probably a good idea to present a threadbare story. "If the viewer were ever invited to think or feel about what's happening on-screen, the movie's wow-whoa-ain't-it-cool momentum would collapse in a heap of horrific preposterousness," he writes. And Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle gives it a rave review, although admitting, "It's hard to do justice to his ridiculous, wonderful movie." LaSalle makes the point: "People talk about 'formula' almost always as a pejorative, but formulas get to be formulas because they work, and there's something to be said for a formula picture done almost to perfection." On the other hand, Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal hasn't a kind word to say about either the story or the effects, tagging the movie, "destructo drek."


BOX, THE 1.5 stars
 by Lew Irwin                     View Film Profile     
How much you're likely to enjoy The Box, which opened at the box office in sixth place with $7.9 million over the weekend, may well depend on how well you are able to cope with preposterous story lines. Indeed, that word -- "preposterous" -- cropped up in many, if not most, of the reviews of the film. In her mixed review, Manohla Dargis in the New York Times regarded The Box as "a serious work that insists on its own seriousness even when it edges toward the preposterous." However, Claudia Puig in USA Today wrote that "director Richard Kelly has fashioned a preposterous tale that lacks the wit that made his Donnie Darko a cult classic." Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News scoffed at the movie's "preposterous special effects." But Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times, while acknowledging that "preposterous" is "one of my favorite adjectives," nevertheless went on to write, "If you make a preposterous movie that isn't boring, I count that as some kind of a triumph." He concluded: "This movie kept me involved and intrigued, and for that I'm grateful. I'm beginning to wonder whether, in some situations, absurdity might not be a strength." But "boring" was indeed the operative term for several critics. "Have you ever actually tried watching paint dry? A sloth walk? Grass grow?" Asked Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times. "You can have all the 'thrills' with none of the chills courtesy of The Box."


4TH KIND, THE 1 star
 by Lew Irwin                     View Film Profile     
The film not to have a close encounter with this weekend, most critics warn, is The Fourth Kind, which is set in Nome, Alaska but which was actually shot in Bulgaria -- documentary style, like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity -- about a supposed invasion of aliens who terrorize the good citizens of Nome. Like its predecessors, says Roger Moore in the Orlando Sentinel, "The Fourth Kind is a fraud, but that wouldn't matter if it were scarier and better acted." Writes Joe Neumaier in the New York Daily News: "Badly acted by everyone (including the director, Olatunde Osunsanmi, who appears onscreen), this insipid jumble's idea of fright is incessant screaming."


Other Current Reviews

PRECIOUS   4 stars
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MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS, THE    3.5 stars
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CHRISTMAS CAROL, A    3 stars
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SAW VI   2 stars
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THIS IS IT!   3.5 stars
Clearly critics who sat in on advance screenings of the Michael Jackson concert documentary This Is It! were expecting to see a shadow of the former vibrant entertainer and (more)

ASTRO BOY   3.5 stars
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CIRQUE DU FREAK: THE VAMPIRE'S ASSISTANT   1.5 stars
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant is receiving a lot of biting criticism from reviewers. Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times calls it "a mess." Kyle Smith in the (more)

AMELIA   2 stars
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WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE   3.5 stars
Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are has been expanded from a nine-sentence, 37-page-long children's book filled mostly with his drawings ("the easiest prereview homework ever," Lisa Kennedy of (more)

COUPLES RETREAT   1.5 stars
It's probably a good thing that Couples Retreat has the weekend to itself as the only movie opening wide. Critics are saying that the only thing funny about this (more)

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY   3.5 stars
For a film that cost only $15,000 to make Paranormal Activity is piling up reviews that are generally as enthusiastic as box-office proceeds have been flourishing. Moving into a (more)

INVENTION OF LYING, THE    3 stars
What would a world be like if lying did not exist? That is the question answered in The Invention of Lying, starring Rickey Gervais. For example, as Roger Ebert (more)

WHIP IT   3 stars
Whip It set in the world of roller derby with Drew Barrymore (who also produces directs) and Ellen Page skating up a storm, follows the outlines of countless other (more)

ZOMBIELAND   4 stars
Clearly Zombieland is not the kind of movie Roger Ebert can sink his teeth into. "Vampires make a certain amount of sense to me, but zombies not so much. (more)

FAME   1 star
If audiences react the way critics have to the remake of the 1980 version of Fame, Leo the Lion will have to go back into hibernation at MGM. The (more)

SURROGATES   1.5 stars
Critics appear to wish that the plot of Surrogates were as intriguing as its premise: it's about a time in which human beings can remain at home, where they (more)

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY   2.5 stars
With Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore is receiving --as usual -- props for his skill as a propagandist filmmaker and -- also as usual -- he is being (more)



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