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Reviews: May 2009 Archives
All In A Day's Work
By Gene Seymour on 05/28/2009
Seen one, you've seen them all. That may be how you feel about zombie movies, but not me. I've been a happy, all-but-credulous consumer of the genre going as far back as the Val Lewton-Jacques Tournier gothic romance "I Walked With a Zombie" through George A. Romero's epic "Living Dead" cycle of gory, apocalyptic satires of consumer culture. Matters not to me if the socio-political context is obtrusively embedded into its storyline (as in Romero's "Dawn of the Dead") or if you have to bring whatever metaphorical baggage you can find to the party ("28 Days Later"). There are those... MORE »
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Meat Puppetry
By Gene Seymour on 05/21/2009
Filed under: ReviewsThis can't possibly be the best of weeks for California's governor. Not only did Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget packages get shot down in flames by the state's voters, thereby forcing him to make service cuts that can only further brake his bid for higher office, but Friday's premiere of "Terminator Salvation" threatens to remind its millions of viewers, including the Governator himself, of the relatively bucolic life he forsook for schmoozing with legislators and managing decline. This new, jump-started "Terminator" rubs it in by inserting a cameo of Schwarzenegger's lizard-eyed countenance and bulging torso lifted through CGI magic from the 1984... MORE »
Family Values
By Gene Seymour on 05/14/2009
Filed under: ReviewsA chamber piece resolutely devoid of flash and glitter, "Summer Hours" isn't a film one would have anticipated from the director of such disparate provocations as "Irma Vep," "Clean," Demonlover" and "Boarding Gate." Then again, Olivier Assayas' new release is subtly provocative in its own right. Its willingness to lay out ideas about art and life in the age of globalization makes it his biggest dare yet. What distinguishes this Assayas movie from the others is the manner with which it sustains an unspoiled blend of the intimately emotional with the unequivocally intellectual. The cumulative strengths of "Summer Hours" as... MORE »
Space, Balls
By Gene Seymour on 05/07/2009
Filed under: ReviewsYou walk out of "Star Trek" feeling giddy, airborne and cleansed, if only for a few minutes, of all mundane worries. This is what summer Hollywood movies are expected to do -- or at least what's been expected of them since 1975, when "Jaws"'s cavalcade of jolly jolts altered the movies' economic landscape, for better and worse. "Giddy" and "airborne" aren't what you recall feeling after, say, last year's "The Dark Knight" or last week's "X-Men Origins: Wolverine." But producer/director J.J. Abrams' cheeky reboot -- or, for those who dare to think long-term, resuscitation -- of the 43-year-old science fiction... MORE »
