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Ty Burr
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'Iron Man 3' review: Third time isn't quite the charm
The "Iron Man" movies have become the thinking person's superhero franchise if for no other reason than that they feature the thinking person's movie star. Alone among his be-muscled and be-spandexed brethren, Robert Downey Jr. clearly considers the whole enterprise vaguely ridiculous. Still, he risks being trapped in that can. "Iron Man 3" is the weakest in the series, and it suffers from confused plotting, flat-footed exposition, and more pure, noisy nonsense than even a comic-book movie should have to put up with. Yet whenever Downey is being Downey, it's still the most subversive Marvel franchise around. There are bad guys who glow like nuclear briquettes, fireballs and detonations, collapsing mansions, crashing airplanes -- and the best scenes are when the star just cuts impatiently through the claptrap. ( 05/03/2013 12:50 PM )
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Movie review: 'Kon-Tiki'
"Kon-Tiki," a movie that re-creates Thor Heyerdahl's famous 1947 crossing of the Pacific on a balsa-wood raft, is caught halfway between a Boy's Own Adventure and a character study of a charming monomaniac. Pål Sverre Hagen, who plays Heyerdahl, is tall, trim, and impossibly blond, and he has penetrating blue eyes that almost -- but not quite -- shade into madness. If they had, it might have made for a more interesting movie: "Tintin Goes Bananas." The movie we've got is rousing and beautiful to look at and undercut by compromises onscreen and off. The movie plays out as a rather less eventful "Life of Pi," lighter on the CGI but also on the drama, and the filmmakers hint at Heyerdahl's less salutary qualities without bothering to explore them. ( 05/02/2013 5:26 PM )
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'Renoir' masters the look of great drama
"Renoir" doesn't get much beneath the surface -- but, good God, what a surface. A leisurely-paced Great Artist drama about the last years of an Impressionist giant, this French import is set on the Cote D'Azur in the summer of 1915, when the palette of nature has run riot. The shots bloom with ochers and vermilions and siennas and cerulean, brushed onto the screen by master cinematographer Mark Ping Bing Lee ("In the Mood for Love"). There are camera pans across a row of freshly caught fish and gleaming ripe peppers chopped by women singing ancient peasant songs. Sensuality is the film's theory and practice, its subject and objective, and the result comes mightily close to synesthesia. This is a movie set on capturing the sound of the sunlight and the colors of the wind. ( 05/02/2013 4:00 PM )
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Movie review: 'Mud'
For a movie with such an elemental title, "Mud" has a lot on its mind. It's a coming-of-age film, a story of fathers and sons, and a regional drama set in a very specific slice of the American South. There are star-crossed lovers and a vengeful clan of killers, a first kiss and a boat stuck in a tree. And there's Matthew McConaughey, who gratifyingly continues to explore his wayward mid-career path. The writer-director is Jeff Nichols, who announced his talent for eerie heartland narrative with 2007's "Shotgun Stories" and confirmed it with "Take Shelter," one of 2011's best films. Both movies benefited from a lean focus on characters and story, but "Mud" ambles like the Mississippi River ox-bows on which the film takes place. ( 04/26/2013 1:08 PM )
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Movie review: 'Pain & Gain'
The news that Michael Bay, the schlockmeister behind the "Tranformers" franchise, "Armageddon," and "Pearl Harbor," was directing a special-effects-free comedy has piqued some people's interest, this critic's included. Maybe the guy would turn out to be good at something besides making ridiculous amounts of money. No such luck. "Pain & Gain," a jokey but fatally tone-deaf true crime caper, plays like "Fargo" for idiots. It's final proof that Bay is a director of great mechanical skill and no discernible talent, which means that he can pull off a camera shot or an action sequence to make you gasp but is remarkably hapless at making a movie that holds together for more than five minutes at a time, let alone from one end to the other. ( 04/25/2013 3:10 PM )
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Best of the Boston fests: IFFB
Last year, the Independent Film Festival of Boston celebrated its 10th anniversary, marking a decade in which it evolved from just another scrappy local event to the best indie-movie smorgasbord in town. This Wednesday, the IFFB opens its second decade with the same mix of strengths that has sustained its growth: savvy curatorial cherry-picking of the best from Sundance, SXSW, and other recent fests; a welcome spotlight on local films and filmmakers; panel discussions and in-person appearances by directors; and a general eye for the weird and wonderful. The 2013 festival runs from April 24-30 and will unspool mostly at the Somerville Theatre, with other venues including the Brattle, the Coolidge, and Theater 1 at the Revere Hotel. ( 04/21/2013 7:28 AM )
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Open to interpretation (and then some)
Rodney Ascher's documentary "Room 237" is a consideration of Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" and what it means to a handful of people who have watched it a lot. We hear their voices on the soundtrack, chatting over images from the movie and patiently explaining just why the reclusive director intended the film as a cleverly encoded secret metaphor about the Holocaust. Or the genocide of the Native American. Or the 1969 Apollo moon landing that Kubrick faked for the US government -- what, you didn't know? -- and for which "The Shining" was meant as a secret confession to the world. The movie's a deadpan entertainment that asks us to laugh at other people's nonsense while inviting us to marvel at the certainty of their faith. ( 04/18/2013 11:00 AM )
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'Disconnect' is a topical drama
"Disconnect" is a film made very much in the post-"Crash" vein of worried social narratives: Multiple characters orbiting around a core of panic. Here the issue is the Internet and all the electronic devices that promise to bring us together yet push us further apart. It's a pressing topic, obviously. I don't know anyone who doesn't wrestle daily with the ethics and conundrums of our new wired society -- what we gain in connectedness and what we give up in human connection. The movie has a ripped-from-the-headlines urgency that would make it a good place-setter before a PTA meeting or panel discussion, and lot of people may mistake the importance of the subject with excellence in filmmaking. And "Disconnect" is far from a bad movie. It's just better at melodrama than drama. ( 04/12/2013 11:00 AM )
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Needing a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing
The last few movies directed by Robert Redford -- 2007's "Lions for Lambs" and 2010's wooden "The Conspirator" -- were such dispiriting moral lectures that "The Company You Keep" comes as a relief. In short, Redford is interested in telling stories again, rather than pounding us on the head for our civic and historical sins. That's not to say the new film -- a dramatic thriller about aging '60s radicals with a pleasurably deep cast -- doesn't have plenty on its mind, from the ethical bankruptcy of the media to the costs of political passion in the 1960s and today. But it moves, and it doesn't pretend to have all the answers, and it sticks in your mind for longer than you'd think. ( 04/11/2013 4:42 PM )
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The 'Wonder' of it all
"To the Wonder" is the first Terrence Malick movie that's a thoroughgoing misfire -- a meditation on love and lost paradise that starts with breathtaking assurance and slowly crumbles into self-parody. The film depicts the relationship of Marina (Olga Kurylenko) and Neil (Ben Affleck) over a number of years in a style that can only be called Deep Malick: whispered fragments of voice-over thoughts, staggeringly beautiful cinematography, a reverence for natural landscapes, transcendent swells of classical music. The subject, really, is ecstasy, and it can lead to ecstasy if you're open to the notion of movies as poetry instead of stolid prose. Yet "To the Wonder" is more opaque than Malick's previous work, and it meanders alarmingly and wearyingly. ( 04/11/2013 4:42 PM )
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'42' does not go deep in telling Jackie Robinson's story
"42," writer-director Brian Helgeland's ambitious new bio-pic about Jackie Robinson is well-acted, handsomely made, and as shallow as a kid's True Heroes picture book. How severe a disappointment that will be may depend on whether you like your inspirational legends served with all the trimmings -- swelling soundtrack music, men rounding third in slow-motion, little boys looking on in awe -- or prefer your heroes life-sized, the better to honestly depict their hard-won triumphs. As Robinson, newcomer Chadwick Boseman is fine, a physical ringer for the player and an actor capable of hitting the script's slow floaters. As Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey, Harrison Ford gives a juicy, two-dimensional hambone of a character performance -- he's an enjoyable cartoon. ( 04/11/2013 3:14 PM )
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So where exactly did he put that Goya?
James McAvoy plays a London auction house employee who gets conked on the head during a brazen robbery of a valuable Goya by a gang of thieves. He wakes up in the hospital minus a chunk of his memory, remembering that he was in on the job but not where he put the painting, so sadistic gang leader (Vincent Cassell) hires a professional hypnotherapist (Rosario Dawson). Despite the title, the movie's the opposite of dozy -- it's what you might get if a post-doctoral student put a heist movie in a Cuisinart. With "Trance," story becomes just another element in the commercial pop-Cubism of director Danny Boyle ("Slumdog Millionaire," "127 Hours") -- a series of fake-outs that ultimately leaves an audience feeling burned. ( 04/11/2013 11:48 AM )
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Romanian director Cristian Mungiu's 'Hills' are alive without music
In the final scenes of Cristian Mungiu's "Beyond the Hills," the camera holds on the face of a young nun named Voichita (Cosmina Stratan). She has just witnessed the dire results of an attempted exorcism, the police have arrived, and her God has suddenly vanished from the face of the earth. The film, based on actual events, has all the hallmarks of the Romanian New Wave: scrupulous realism, long camera movements, a lack of soundtrack music, and drama that slowly builds to an unbearable pitch. It's a deceptively impersonal style, because "Beyond the Hills" seethes with astonishment and rage at a broken society marooned between the 21st century and the 16th. ( 04/09/2013 10:42 AM )
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Movie review: 'The Place Beyond the Pines' Gosling is reason enough to venture 'Beyond the Pines'Cop's and robber's sons
"The Place Beyond the Pines," director Derek Cianfrance's follow-up to 2010's "Blue Valentine" is an ambitious triptych that gradually caves in to over-plotting and pretensions. It's very much a film about men, their yearnings and discontents, and about the way sins tumble down from one generation to the next. It's a bank-robber movie, too, as well as a drama about the pressures teenagers face from parents and peers: You can feel Cianfrance biting off more and more until his mouth is too full to chew. Ryan Gosling makes the first third into something very special, though, and Bradley Cooper does what he can with the midsection. The final third feels like the work of talented men trying too hard to erase their footsteps. ( 04/04/2013 3:14 PM )
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'From Up on Poppy Hill' is lesser Miyazaki, but still worth a look
The news that a new Miyazaki movie has arrived on these shores is usually cause for delirium tremens in animaniacs and joy in knowledgeable children and their parents. In the case of "From Up on Poppy Hill," though, expectations should be tempered, for it's a Miyazaki movie quite literally in name only. While the legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki co-wrote and served on the creative team for this manga-derived romantic drama -- a tale that falls squarely in the shoujo genre of comics and anime aimed at teenage girls -- his son Goro directed. The film's perfectly fine, but it's not a patch on "Spirited Away," "My Neighbor Totoro," "Princess Mononoke," and other Studio Ghibli classics. ( 04/04/2013 2:03 PM )
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Tagging the Big Apple in 'Gimme the Loot'
It's been a while since we've had a street-scene movie as rough and tender and right as "Gimme the Loot," a fable about getting by on a summer's day in the boroughs of New York. Written and directed by Adam Leon, the film looks like it cost two nickels to make (coins or bags, take your pick), but it keeps its sights low and focused on the neighborhood hum and casual Darwinism of life in the city. Tashiana Washington and Ty Hickson play teenaged partners in graffiti-tagging: Their dream is to tag the giant Home Run Apple at Citi Field. The time period is now but the vibe is urban-timeless: Doo-wop numbers and great, gritty R&B songs fill the soundtrack, mocking the character's small-time ambitions. ( 04/04/2013 1:59 PM )
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'Host' is at least more inviting than 'Twilight'
In the movies, no one can hear Stephenie Meyer write. This turns out to be a huge plus for "The Host," the cinematic sci-fi romance that has been winnowed down from Meyer's 625-page heavy-breather and ably fit into just over two hours of movie by writer-director Andrew Niccol. The novel, Meyer's follow-up to her "Twilight" series, has some of the same obsessions. Instead of a girl torn between a hunky vampire and a werewolf to die for, "The Host" is about a girl and a girlish alien sharing one body while torn between two cute human guys. This plot might lend itself to exploring themes of the divided emerging self, or the eternal conflict between Id and Super-ego, or -- nahhh, it's mostly about kissing boys. **1/2 The Host Stephenie Meyer's follow-up novel to her "Twilight" saga is a sci-fi romance with many of the same concerns; Saoirse Ronan ("Atonement") plays a human girl whose mind is taken over by an alien (a nice alien), then they both fall in love with different cute guys. Andrew Niccol directs, surprisingly ably. Max Irons and William Hurt costar. (121 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr) ( 03/28/2013 3:07 PM )
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In 'The Sapphires,' Aussie girl group gets by on oldies but goodies
**1/2 The Sapphires A formulaic but extra-likable Australian charmer about an Aborigine sister act singing soul music to US troops in 1968 Vietnam. Chris O'Dowd ("Bridesmaids") is the marquee name (sort of), but Deborah Mailman is the movie's star and life force as oldest sister Gail. The plot elements are familiar, but the film feels the funk. (103 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr) ( 03/28/2013 2:59 PM )
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Movie review: 'Reality'
**** Reality A Neapolitan fishmonger (Aniello Arena) has a chance to appear on a reality show, and it's the worst thing that could have happened to him. Director Matteo Garrone ("Gomorrah") delivers a playful, dark, increasingly sharp inquiry into the metaphysics of modern fame -- how the dream of "being seen" can completely unhinge the average schmo. In Italian, with subtitles. (116 min., R) (Ty Burr) ( 03/28/2013 2:55 PM )
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Grim 'War Witch' foresees some hope
***1/2 War Witch An overwhelmingly grim yet clear-eyed and moving tale of a child soldier (Rachel Mwanza) in sub-Saharan Africa. Kim Nguyen's movie seeks out glimmers of hope in individual resilience and in the connections that bind us together. An Oscar nominee for best foreign language film. In French and Lingala, with subtitles. (90 min., unrated) (Ty Burr) ( 03/27/2013 3:48 PM )
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'On the Road' does right by Jack Kerouac -- Movie Review
*** On the Road A surprisingly effective adaptation of the Jack Kerouac classic, if no substitute for reading the book. Brazil's Walter Salles ("The Motorcycle Diaries") directs with a solid eye for period and landscape, and he has a great Dean Moriarty in Garrett Hedlund. With Sam Riley, Kirsten Dunst, and Kristen Stewart, the latter not bad at all. (124 min., R) (Ty Burr) ( 03/21/2013 5:21 PM )
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Movie review: 'Spring Breakers'
***1/2 Spring Breakers Director Harmony Korine ("Gummo") comes of age with this mesmerizing vision of teenage apocalypse. Former TV innocents Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, and Selena Gomez play college girls who rob a diner and head to St. Pete, where they hook up with a sleazy gangbanger (a surprisingly effective James Franco). The film's an outrageous provocation, shocking and exhilarating and tender in equal measure. (94 min., R) (Ty Burr) ( 03/21/2013 4:51 PM )
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Movie review: 'Ginger & Rosa'
*** Ginger & Rosa The new movie by Sally Potter ("Orlando") is her most mainstream work to date, a solid coming-of-age memory play set in a 1962 London of Ban the Bomb marches and parental betrayals. It's made special by Elle Fanning, who gives an achingly luminous, utterly natural performance in the lead. With Christina Hendricks, Alessandro Nivola, and Alice Englert. (90 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr) ( 03/21/2013 3:14 PM )
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'Admission' is a pleasant comedy that never takes its subject too seriously
**1/2 Admission A blandly pleasant comedy about the scramble to get into college. Tina Fey dials down the sitcom wackiness to play a Princeton admissions officer wooed by crunchy high school director Paul Rudd. Director Paul Weitz juggles plotlines and tries to keep us from noticing he's made a movie that's primarily about disappointment. Based on a novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz. (107 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr) ( 03/21/2013 3:01 PM )
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'Charles' has bigger problems than Charlie
*1/2 A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III The actor/walking disaster known as Charlie Sheen gives a perfectly credible performance as a graphic design rock star coming undone in LA. It's the rest of Roman Coppola's film that tries your patience. Sun-drenched, Art Deco, unambitious, it's what you'd imagine a Hollywood scion would make. With Bill Murray. (86 min., R) (Ty Burr) ( 03/14/2013 12:46 PM )
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Movie review: 'The Incredible Burt Wonderstone'
** The Incredible Burt Wonderstone Steve Carell as a fatuous Las Vegas magician. It's a lazy "Anchorman" rip that you watch in a happy state of expectation anyway, because the concept's rich and just enough of it gets onto the screen, along with fine comic actors like Steve Buscemi, Alan Arkin, and James Gandolfini. Less so Jim Carrey, who's over-indulged. (101 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr) ( 03/14/2013 12:41 PM )
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Halle Berry answers 'The Call'
** The Call Halle Berry stars as a 911 operator trying to save kidnapped teen Abigail Breslin ("Little Miss Sunshine"), who's stuck in a psycho's trunk with a dying cellphone. Grueling, effective suspense, and the scenes in the call center are novel, but the movie gets increasingly stupid as it caves into thriller clichés. (90 min., R) (Ty Burr) ( 03/14/2013 12:37 PM )
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Movie review: 'Like Someone in Love'
***1/2 Like Someone in Love The latest small, perplexing masterpiece from the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami ("Certified Copy"). Set in Tokyo, it follows a college student call girl (Rin Takanashi), her possessive fiance (Ryo Kase), and a retired professor (Tadashi Okuno), all chasing illusions of love. It's a quiet, contemplative film that darkens in the memory. In Japanese, with subtitles. (109 min., unrated) (Ty Burr) ( 03/14/2013 12:34 PM )
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'West of Memphis' documentary about boys' murders finds new ground to mine
***1/2 West of Memphis A clear-eyed and convincing overview of the "West Memphis Three" case that provides a larger picture that the "Paradise Lost" trilogy of documentaries sometimes missed. Director Amy Berg takes us from the 1993 murders of three young boys to the gradual but total dismantling of the case against three men who are widely believed to have been wrongly convicted of the crimes. (147 min., R) (Ty Burr) ( 03/14/2013 12:26 PM )
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Movie review: 'Lore'
***1/2 Lore In May of 1945, a 14-year-old girl (newcomer Saskia Rosendahl) leads her younger siblings across a conquered Germany toward a tortured acceptance of her country's and family's guilt. The second film by the gifted Australian director Cate Shortland occupies a stark dramatic minefield between historical reality and psychosexual myth. Over-stylized, yes, but overpowering too. In German, with subtitles. (109 min., unrated) (Ty Burr) ( 03/08/2013 12:00 AM )
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Movie review: 'Oz the Great and Powerful'
** Oz the Great and Powerful This unofficial prequel has 3-D, the latest computer effects, and Sam Raimi behind the camera. But, alas, a lightweight James Franco is in front of the camera as a feckless young magician whisked to Oz. There are glorious moments, but the film never finds its groove. With Rachel Weisz (great), Michelle Williams (good), and Mila Kunis (sorry, no). (130 min., PG) (Ty Burr) ( 03/07/2013 2:20 PM )
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Ty Burr on Raúl Ruiz's final work, 'Night Across the Street'
It's a pretty small category: films about death made by directors who knew they were dying. Until now, the genre has included a scant three movies that I know of: John Huston's "The Dead" (1987), Derek Jarman's "Blue" (1993), and Robert Altman's "A Prairie Home Companion" (2006). The arrival of Raúl Ruiz's final work, "Night Across the Street," brings the total to four, an elegant, clear-eyed bridge game of artists playing their last trump cards. ( 03/07/2013 2:04 PM )
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Movie review: 'No'
***1/2 No A sly true-life drama about the 1988 vote that threw out Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, focusing on an ad man (Gael Garcia Bernal) who sold democracy like it was Coca-Cola. The movie has a cool intelligence that ripples up the years to where we live. A 2013 best foreign language Oscar nominee. In Spanish, with subtitles. (118 min., R) (Ty Burr) ( 03/07/2013 1:20 PM )
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Movie review: 'Dead Man Down'
** Dead Man Down Colin Farrell and Noomi Rapace are two urban loners whose parallel revenge plots intertwine. A bruised, loopy, violent crime thriller that has its melodramatic charms before the story gets stupid, it's the first Hollywood film by Niels Arden Oplev (the Swedish version of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"). Costarring Terrence Howard and, surreally, Isabelle Huppert. (118 min., R) (Ty Burr) ( 03/07/2013 1:16 PM )
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