MUPPETS, THE
by Chiara Adorno
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The Muppets is a winning combination of nostaglia, muppetry and good times according to critics. It is about the now decaying Muppet Studios which is in danger of being torn down by a conniving oil man (Chris Cooper). The Muppets put on a telethon to save the studio. They have gone to seed, or most of them - Kermit lives in a huge empty mansion in Bel Air, Fozzie Bear is a performer in Reno with a Muppet tribute band, Animal is in anger management classes, Gonzo is a plumbing supply tycoon, while Miss Piggy is a high-powered fashion editor - of course, her assistant is Emily Blunt. Jack Black is captured and tied to a chair as the celebrity guest star of the show and he spends most of the time screaming or commenting on the onscreen action. Laremy Legal of Film.com has this to say about the film, "... the brand of comedy The Muppets offers isn’t built from the newly minted awkward realism of Ricky Gervais, or of the old-school anger and fury of the late, great Bill Hicks. It’s something kinder, gentler, and more broad — willfully detached from ego but still earnestly comical." Amy Biancolli of The San Francisco Chronicle appreciates the film for, "... simplicity, innocence and goofy jokes. It's a triumph of felt. It's a triumph of childhood and childishness, of pratfalls and belly laughs, of the plain stupid joy in watching Jack Black get bound and kidnapped by puppets. To call it a great film would be missing the point, because the Muppets never aspired to greatness. The only "-nesses" they ever aspired to were niceness, funniness and old-fangled vaudeville corniness designed to make us smile." As for its human lead character, played by Jason Segel, Bilge Ebiri of New York Magazine says, "Segel turns out to be curiously perfect for the role of Muppet savior. The actor’s cinematic persona has always hovered between good-natured earnestness and calculated artificiality (as in I Love You, Man, where he kept us wondering if he was the hero’s best friend or just a hustler after an easy mark). His purposefully awkward song and dance numbers, his overzealous vivaciousness help give the movie a homespun quality that smooths over — or rather, justifies — its many rough edges." Bruce Diones of praises, "the movie is clearly a labor of love, and [Director James Bobin's] joyous feeling for Jim Henson’s puppet creations is infectious." |
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HAYWIRE
by Chiara Adorno
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Haywire an action-thriller from Director Steven Soderbergh, has received positive reviews from critics. The plot is straight forward. Former Marine and covert ops specialist Mallory Kane (Gina Carano) is betrayed and goes on the run after an assignment turns out to be more complicated than advertised. Using her wits and her fists, she eludes the authorities and villains alike, while trying to clear her name. Gina Carano is best known as a mixed martial arts fighter champion and American Gladiators contestant, and makes her acting debut in this film. The film showcases her kicking and punching such big-screen stars as Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor and Antonio Banderas. The story is told by Mallory in a flurry of flash-backs to a chivalrous kid, Scott (Michael Angarano), whose intervention lands him in a world of mayhem, speeding toward a showdown. James Verniere Boston Herald expresses regret however, stating, "Too bad the movie, an action thriller with roots in the globe-trotting Jason Bourne films and an origami-shaped plot structure like Soderbergh’s award-winning Traffic (2000), is little more than a daisy-chain of MacGuffins held together by pseudo-hard-boiled Robert Ludlum/John LeCarre-style spy-movie dialogue and pulp-noir jibber-jabber." Stella Papamichael Digital Spy praised the action sequences accessing, "What Carano lacks in depth, she makes up for with awesome poise - even while standing still. The action scenes are where she truly excels, running up walls and bounding across rooftops to punish those who betrayed her. She has credibility as an action heroine that is rarely seen on film, even outpunching Uma Thurman in Kill Bill (though Thurman has greater magnetism). Where this film differs from Tarantino's 'rampage of revenge' is in the gritty realist approach as opposed to a comic book aesthetic.... The opening skirmish and a one-on-one with Michael Fassbender as a British agent are especially hard-hitting, but brilliantly shot and choreographed to that end. If only the structure of the story was as robust as Carano, this thriller would have been hard to beat." Joe Neumaier New York Daily News notes the film is, "... clean and no-fuss, and needs more action scenes to match Carano’s game.... Soderbergh avoids any music during the action scenes, a smart, disquieting choice that shows how upper-tier directors, when they do genre flicks (à la Quentin Tarantino, Sam Raimi and Michael Mann), can elevate things instead of letting conventions drag them down." A.O. Scott New York Times had biting things to say about the film, however. He calls the plot "defiantly preposterous and uninteresting." As for the story overall, he says, "nothing is really in doubt, and very little is at stake.... it goes to great lengths to avoid being about anything beyond its immediate situations and effects. It is self-consciously and aggressively trivial, a feast for formalists who sentimentalize the gloriously cheap B-movies of the past." He calls the fighting Carano pretends to do in the film, which she does for real in the ring, "an intriguing curiosity and something of a conceptual puzzle... Once the talking stops and the action begins, her professionalism is very much in evidence and exciting to watch. And yet, somehow, it cannot quite relieve the tedium of a movie that is too cool even to pretend that there is anything worth fighting about." |
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CONTRABAND
by Chiara Adorno
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Contraband has critics mostly divided in what is labeled your average January action thriller.The film is based on the Icelandic film Reykjavik-Rotterdam about a smuggler directed by Baltasar Kormákur, who was the star and one of the producers of the earlier movie. The remake stars Mark Walberg, who plays Chris Farraday. Chris is lured into the quintessential one-last-job when his young brother-in-law (Caleb Landry Jones) screws up a shipment and throws 10 pounds of Cocaine overboard when his ship is interdicted. Chris agrees to make "one more run" to Panama to save his wife's brother. Evil guy Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi) makes it clear that unless Chris covers the loss, the Farraday family will be targeted. Glenn Kenny MSN Movies concludes the film "...is as hackneyed as hackneyed gets (it's the one about the old pro who's gone straight and just when he thinks he's out they pull him back in again, rinse, lather, repeat), it piles on complications and veers in new directions with such impressive dispatch that it more often than not sweeps the viewer past a bunch of plausibility checkpoints with no concerns save how the hero's gonna get out of his next nasty jam. It's a good, chugging caper movie for the most part.... while no groundbreaker, Contrabandis a pretty fair achievement on the Wahlberg genre scale." Christopher Lloyd Herald-Tribune notes that, "On most any level of serious consideration, the film isn’t a particularly good movie. Its plot twists telegraph themselves pretty clearly, and every performer other than Wahlberg is only afforded a few scenes to piece together any depth to their characters. But darn it, I just couldn’t help having fun.... Contraband may not be anybody’s idea of great filmmaking, but with its scene-stealing cast, a few clever potboiler scenes and another sturdy performance from Wahlberg, it left me pleasantly snookered." Others were not so kind. Mike Scott The Times-Picayune says of Walberg, while he's capable of comedy, "... one gets the feeling he's more at home squinting severely at the camera or hissing threats while slowly crushing some greaseball's windpipe." But what we are left with, "is a movie that is about as nourishing as the Junior Mints and nachos available at the theater snack bar." James Verniere Boston Herald praises a bright spot in the film, when he observes, "... these just-when-I-thought-I-was-out-they-pull-me-back-in plots are a dime a dozen. But once aboard the good ship whatever, carrying a massive cargo of containers from New Orleans to Panama, the film picks up, no doubt in large part because the icy-eyed skipper is played by J.K. Simmons.... [its also got] plenty of tasty New Orleans-based music in its score." |
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WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN
by Chiara Adorno
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We Need to Talk About Kevin draws praise from the critics due to the efforts of actor Tilda Swinton, who plays Eva, as well as the fine directing by Lynne Ramsay and cinematography by Seamus McGarvey. The film is based on the best-selling novel of the same name, exploring nature vs. nurture while carrying it to a whole new level. The film is the story of the mother of a boy who goes on a killing spree at school, and the focus is her reflections on her son's earlier life which shows traces of a budding sociopath. In present day, Eva's nights are a haze of drug and alcohol induced loneliness. She rouses herself by morning, barely getting by as a clerk in a small travel agency, and experiencing hatred from all directions. As Jake Coyle Boston Globe explains, "Guilt doesn't just weigh heavily, it obliterates." Her guilt comes from her early mothering of Kevin which seems to have gone off the rails at the start. "Eva's attempts at motherly care -- cold though she is -- are eventually beaten down and she breaks, at one point seething: "Every morning mommy wakes up and wishes she was in France." In another moment of weakness, she turns violent..... The script by Ramsay and Rory Stewart Kinnear, adapting Lionel Shriver's acclaimed novel, artfully blends these two timelines evoking Eva's interior consciousness, where every moment recalls a precursor to the tragedy, [the school massacre] a debate of her role in it." Dana Stevens Slate admires how the three boys who play Kevin, "show a remarkable continuity, not just in their physical appearance but in their furious, dead-eyed gaze; Ezra Miller, in particular, bravely pushes his characterization well past the point of loathsomeness. There’s something off-putting and reptilian about this child from toddlerhood on, a quality Ramsay emphasizes...." Kenneth Turan Los Angeles Times informs us that, "What holds us in the film, besides Ramsay's skill, is Swinton's fearless, ferocious performance as someone not only trying to come to terms with an endless nightmare but also agonizing over what part she might have had in its creation." |
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ARTIST, THE
by Chiara Adorno
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The Artist has won positive reviews and praise from critics as a satisfying and joyous film about the magic of silent cinema. The film spans five years, from 1927 through 1932, a great time of upheaval for the film industry. The first talkies arrived in October of 1927 and so, while in 1929 all Best Picture nominated films were silent ones, in 1930 four out of the five were talkies. We follow the career trajectories of a leading male star of the Valentino variety, who experiences a serious downward spiral, while one of the extras in his films, a soon-to-be starlet, experiences a meteoric rise and becomes America's sweetheart. James Berardinelli Reelviews observes, "... what makes The Artist so much more than a version of A Star Is Born, is how it is presented. And the movie is special not just because it's silent, but because of the effort invested to give it a genuine 1920s look and feel, and because so much love is evident in the final product. It was made by people with an understanding of film history and an appreciation for what it would take to honor two eras - the late-silent/early talky one and the early 21st century one - in a single movie." Colin Covert Star Tribune called it, ".... a rocket to the moon fueled by unadulterated joy and pure imagination.... Director Michel Hazanavicius has a control over the medium that is hypnotic. He shot the film in the squarish screen ratio of the era, and he works every simple, elegant image with dazzling craftsmanship." Steven Rea Philadelphia Inquirer comments,"Strangely, wonderfully, The Artist feels as bold and innovative a moviegoing experience as James Cameron's bells-and-whistles Avatar did a couple of years ago. Retro becomes nuevo. Quaint becomes cool.... Hazanavicius and his cast have writ a love letter to a bygone day, to bygone ways. And in doing so, they've reminded us why we love the movies, and why they matter." |
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IRON LADY, THE
by Chiara Adorno
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The Iron Lady has the critics evenly divided, with the always incredible Meryl Streep's intimate portrayal of Margaret Thatcher, the first and only female Prime Minister of the UK. The film spans close to two decades after Thatcher has left office, recounting her days as PM in flashback. What we see mostly is an old woman with advancing Alzheimer's disease, interspersed, all too few, with the most memorable moments of her past.James Berardinelli in Reelviews laments rather comically, "The most disappointing aspect of The Iron Lady is that some of the most memorable hallmarks of Thatcher's time in power are glossed over. The Falklands War is covered at warp speed. An IRA attempt on her life gets a couple of minutes. Her relationship with U.S. President Ronald Reagan is confined to a brief scene of them dancing at an official function. By spending so much time with Thatcher in her dotage, the movie becomes limited in its ability to tell the story of her earlier years in a convincing, compelling fashion. One can get a better sense of her importance to recent history by reading her Wikipedia entry." Dana Stevens Salon identifies similarities she's noted by screenwriter Abi Morgan, who also co-wrote the film, Shame, stating, "Both feature a driven, single-minded protagonist who manages to impress us as complex and larger-than-life thanks to the sheer force of personality of the actor playing him or her. And both films seem to take place in a context so thin, it’s as if their bullheaded main characters — Shame’s self-loathing poon hound and The Iron Lady’s indestructible battle-ax — were acting against a painted backdrop....Her [Morgan] film falls, with a consistency that starts to seem willful, into every biopic sandtrap. There are secondary characters who seem to exist only as exposition-delivery devices; historical montages assembled from TV news footage; and flashback reveries triggered by a character gazing at a framed photograph (an image that’s the visual equivalent of hearing harp arpeggios on the soundtrack.).... If it weren't for Streep, The Iron Lady would be unwatchable." Ouch. Peter Bradshaw The Guardian opines, "Margaret is played with cunning and gusto by Meryl Streep, and it is a pious critical convention to praise performances like these on the grounds that they go beyond mere impersonation.... Basically, this is a defanged, declawed, depoliticised Margaret Thatcher, whom we are invited to admire on the feeble grounds that she is tougher and gutsier than the men." Peter Rainer The Christian Science Monitor submits, "Streep is, as always, pitch perfect. Much like her Julia Child in Julie and Julia she goes way beyond impersonation. But even Streep can’t single-handedly give depth and nuance to a movie so briskly content with skimming surfaces both political and psychological." |
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Other Current Reviews
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EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE
|
Extremely
Loud
&
Incredibly
Close
has
critics
evenly
divided.
Its
sentimentality
is
deplored
by
its
detractors
but
defended
by
those
who
find
the
film
moving.
This
is
the
story
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| DANGEROUS METHOD, A
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A
Dangerous
Method
has
received
positive
reviews
from
critics.
Directed
by
David
Cronenberg,
who
notoriously
flouts
taboo
subjects,
the
director
tackles
another
in
his
exploration
of
cardinal
themes
in
(more)
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| GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, THE
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The
Girl
with
the
Dragon
Tattoo
has
received
somewhat
mixed
but
ultimately
solid
reviews
from
critics.
Directed
by
David
Fincher
(The
Social
Network)
and
starring
Daniel
Craig
and
Rooney
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| WAR HORSE
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War
Horse
has
received
positive
reviews
from
most
critics
however,
of
note
is
the
indelible
Spielberg
vision
which
ranks
sentimentality
above
a
more
nuanced
approach.
The
film
is
an
(more)
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| MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL
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Mission:
Impossible
-
Ghost
Protocol
has
received
positive
reviews
from
critics
with
many
citing
it
as
the
best
installment
of
the
franchise.
Brad
Bird,
the
animation
director
behind
The
Incredibles,
(more)
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SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS
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Sherlock
Holmes:
A
Game
of
Shadows
has
received
mediocre
reviews
from
critics.
with
Guy
Ritchie
at
the
helm
again,
Robert
Downey
Jr.
and
Jude
Law
reprise
their
roles
as
Holmes
(more)
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