If you saw any the SNL sketches or the Super Bowl commercial featuring the nimrod government agent MacGruber — basically Richard Dean Anderson’s MacGyver by way of “The Jerk” hero Navin Johnson — you know to expect from the film that bears his name: five or six inspired bits, surrounded by padding. MacGruber (Will Forte)…
There are two kinds of bad films: actively bad and passively bad. Actively bad movies are engaging. They’re technically competent but utterly nonsensical (and/or offensive), or else so astoundingly inept in every conceivable way that they’re mesmerizing. The greatest actively bad films think they’re masterpieces and carry themselves with an unearned aura of importance. But…
With the release of “Iron Man 2,” the Marvel Comics franchise is officially two-for-two — two thoroughly competent, occasionally inspired yet ultimately forgettable films that promise sly engagement with real-world anxieties, then set that promise aside in favor of corporate intrigue and endless scenes of robots bashing the crap out of each other. The first…
Update: Dennis Hopper passed away Saturday, May 29th at his home in California. Dennis Hopper’s recent announcement of terminal cancer jump-started a long-overdue appreciation of his art and life. He got a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame last month (finally), and newspaper and blog appreciations are starting to pop up, focusing mainly on Hopper…
“‘Star Wars: The Phantom Menace’ was the most disappointing thing since my son.” That’s the daffy opening line of filmmaker Mike Stoklasa’s “‘Star Wars: The Phantom Menace’ Review,” an insightful, rudely funny takedown of George Lucas’ prequel. And it’s as good a place as any to start an appreciation of a hybrid of the video…
“Muppets Bohemian Rhapsody” debuted on the Muppets’ newly inaugurated YouTube channel just three weeks ago. But nearly ten million views later, it already feels like a signpost that we’ll look back on fondly — a goofy capper to a rotten decade, a bridge to whatever lies ahead, and perhaps a future time capsule, a reminder…
Film criticism as we know it tends to fall into a handful of time-worn categories: an expression of one’s personality, politics and taste, with traces of social critique and memoir (Pauline Kael, James Agee); or a kind of performance art on the page, using individual films, actors or filmmakers as springboards for sustained riffs on…
In this summer’s most spectacular features — from CGI-driven live-action movies to 3-D animated fare — the real star has been the camera. It’s as lively, confident and versatile as any lead actor, taking any opportunity to get into character for a particular shot or sequence, doing whatever it needs to do to sell a…
In the nearly two decades that I’ve been writing film reviews, I can’t recall another week that saw the release of three movies that are guaranteed to wind up on my year-end Ten Best list. The movies are vampire love story “Thirst” and the documentaries “The Cove,” about an aquatic conservationist’s attempts to stop the…
For weeks now, I’ve heard fellow critics recommending Armando Iannucci’s “In the Loop,” a film about a verbal blunder that leads to an international crisis, as a pinnacle of screwball satire, a treasure trove of absurd situations and quotable lines, a “Dr. Strangelove” for the new millennium. I understand the fuss: the state of movie…
What is cinema? André Bazin published a book of essays that tried to answer that question. But if somebody asked me for the short answer, I’d advise them to visit EternalMoonwalk.com. Seriously. On first glance, the site seems little more than a poignant goof: a tribute to the late Michael Jackson that draws its inspiration…
From Bambi’s mother’s death to the destruction of Alderaan, every modern generation is cursed and blessed with its very own big-screen traumas. “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” the sixth film in the series based on J.K. Rowling’s fantasy novels, contains a doozy; that millions of readers know it’s coming won’t dim its power in…
Sacha Baron Cohen’s improvisational prank film “Brüno” is a conceptual mess that’s satisfying as a lowball, turn-your-brain-off snot comedy, but deeply problematic as social commentary. It’s this last aspect, unfortunately, that made 2006′s “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” (and the character’s original TV incarnation) an object of debate.…
“The only thing important is where somebody’s going.” That bit of existential wisdom comes from none other than John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), the soft-spoken, bank-jacking antihero of “Public Enemies,” Michael Mann’s latest epic about unhappy tough guys doing what they do best. It’s offered by way of flirtation, as part of Dillinger’s out-of-nowhere and all-out…
