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Reviews: April 2009 Archives
Lone Rangers
By Gene Seymour on 04/29/2009
Back in the early '60s, when Sonny Liston ruled boxing and hard bop could still be found on the corner jukebox, just wearing a sharkskin suit could be construed as an act of aggression, passive or otherwise. Sharkskin is the uniform of choice worn by the protagonist of Jim Jarmusch's alluring, enigmatic "The Limits of Control." Isaach De Bankolé's Lone Man (for that's how he is ID'd in the program notes, if not the movie itself) is like Jarmusch's Ghost Dog, taciturn and resolute, if also exposed to more sunlight. Lone Man's granite-slab impassiveness is buttressed by the sharkskin's implicit... MORE »
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Knocked Down, Then Dragged Out
By Charles Taylor on 04/22/2009
Filed under: ReviewsDespite all the terrible publicity Mike Tyson has gotten over the years, I've never forgotten seeing him nearly two decades ago on "The Arsenio Hall Show," walking out to surprise Muhammad Ali. When Hall asked who'd win if they got into the ring, Ali pointed to Tyson. Tyson, shaking his head said, "I know I'm great. But here all heads must bow and all tongues must confess that this is the greatest of all time." Every bit of scandal since has made me wonder what happened to the generosity and lyricism I saw that night. James Toback's documentary "Tyson" gives... MORE »
State of Decline
By Charles Taylor on 04/15/2009
Filed under: ReviewsIt's a measure of the smarts at work in "State of Play" that while none of the characters' motives are clean, the movie never lapses into cynicism. This tense, cleanly made thriller, directed by Kevin Macdonald ("The Last King of Scotland"), plays off the faux scandals of the Clinton years (the Lewinsky affair) and the genuine outrages that occurred under Bush (contracting mercenaries to fight in Iraq) and says that what remains of the press is no longer able to tell the difference between real news and fake news. The plot takes off with the seeming suicide of a young... MORE »
Maul Cop
By Charles Taylor on 04/08/2009
Filed under: ReviewsEven if the early buzz around Jody Hill's "Observe and Report" weren't grouping it with "The Cable Guy," the comparison would be obvious. Like that film, "Observe and Report" is said to be a "dark" comedy. In this case that means that calculated outrageousness, brutalism presented for laughs and easy cynicism passes for daring. When "Observe and Report" fails with audiences -- as it will, and as "The Cable Guy" did -- the myth will start about it being rejected because it disturbed its detractors. What disturbed me about "Observe and Report" was that the people around me who were... MORE »
The Land of Opportunity
By Charles Taylor on 04/01/2009
Filed under: ReviewsTo college students graduating into the nightmare of the current job market, the floating, companionable uncertainty of "Adventureland" must look very agreeable. Greg Mottola's gentle comedy is set mostly in a Pittsburgh amusement park during the summer of 1987. The hero, James (Jesse Eisenberg), was expecting to spend the season traveling around Europe. But money troubles at home make it impossible for his parents (hangdog Jack Gilpin and Wendie Malick, with her bruised brightness) to finance the trip they've promised him. Even his place at Columbia Journalism School in the fall is uncertain. Mottola, whose last film was the mostly... MORE »
