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Wesley Morris
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‘Precious’ bluntly goes to a place rarely seen - the life of a young black girl
In “Precious,’’ Claireece Precious Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) usually comes home from school and prepares dinner for her mother, Mary (Mo’Nique), in their Harlem apartment. Mary could probably make dinner herself. But it’s easier for her to throw the dinner out or at Claireece if she’s not the cook. Mary curses at Claireece, who is dark-skinned, overweight, and, at 16, having ...‘The Messenger’ serves notice about the casualties of war
I’ve worried before that it might be too soon for movies about our current wars. They’re too fresh to get a dramatic grip on either the conflicts or what provoked them. What many filmmakers have produced were tracts that cast a skeptical eye. But, as it turns out, the proximity wasn’t the problem. It was the point of view. Americans ...‘Black Dynamite’ is mostly a blast
In the spoof that bears his name, Black Dynamite (Michael Jai White) sports every outfit in the blaxploitation-look book. While investigating the murder of his junkie brother, he wears a cheap-looking suit with lapels that belong on a pterodactyl. He drops in on a warren of pimps in a leather trench coat, leather pants, and a turtleneck (all black). He ...‘Blind Side’ sticks to the playbook on race and renewal
It may be based on a true story, but “The Blind Side’’ delivers two heart-yanking hours of Hollywood physics. One kid’s bad existence gets better with the application of a great deal of upper-middle-class pressure. The movie recounts the story of how a tough-loving interior decorator named Leigh Anne Touhy (Sandra Bullock ) invited Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron), an enormous, ...‘Twilight’ tour harks back to golden age of movie promotion
Kellan Lutz, who plays a vampire in the new “Twilight’’ movie, made an appearance at the Natick Collection last week. He signed posters for the 500 fans who persevered to earn that honor, and grinned heartily for the 75 fans anointed with the chance to be photographed at his side. Hundreds more - most of them girls, most of them ...
As a portrait of the art world, ‘(Untitled)’ exhibits humor, not cynicism
The New York art world does such a wonderful job of satirizing itself that further assistance hardly seems necessary. But with “(Untitled),’’ writer and director Jonathan Parker takes for granted the trumped-up stakes, the humorlessness, and the artists’ capacity for opportunism and willful absurdity. The players in this movie are cynical, but, amazingly, Parker is not. His movie works as ...Understanding their father William Kunstler’s ‘Universe’
suggest a man whose political sympathies bordered on the promiscuous.A jarring Pandora-like ‘Box’
“The Box’’ almost squeezes the non-anatomical part of your stomach that tenses up in moments of dread. Considering how long it’s been since a movie’s gotten near that part of my stomach, that’s not an insignificant “almost.’’ James Marsden and a twangy Cameron Diaz, looking like a Pan-Am flight attendant, play Arthur and Norma Lewis. A package appears on the ...Vikings will be Vikings in ‘Severed Ways’
Doesn’t “Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America’’ sound like the driest piece of History Channel docu-tainment? And while most of the scenes in Tony Stone’s peculiar Middle Ages art project look like a homemade educational reenactment, the film is actually more involving than it should be. “Severed Ways’’ shrinks the line separating seriousness from keeping a straight face.‘The Horse Boy’ shares a well-meaning but arduous journey
No one wants to say that a movie about two parents’ wish to alleviate their son’s autism is a bad idea. But when that wish produces an arduous trek across Mongolia in search of a shaman and when the movie about that trek is called “The Horse Boy,’’ my eyebrows go up. And up they stayed for most of this ...‘Brief Interviews With Hideous Men’ ranges from soaring scenes to screen tests
In reading David Foster Wallace’s “Brief Interviews With Hideous Men,’’ it may never have crossed your mind that his assault on a particular type of gender politics would make a cute little movie. That’s because it wouldn’t. John Krasinski, that nice guy from “The Office,’’ didn’t seem to notice. He’s strip-mined Wallace’s 10-year-old story collection, which sought to castigate the ...Alien-abduction story ‘The Fourth Kind’ is an actual case - of silliness
The big news about “The Fourth Kind’’ is that its supernatural horror is based on real events. This is true in the same way that Pamela Anderson’s chest is based on real breasts. In the opening scene, a blurry Milla Jovovich walks into focus and attempts to explain. “I am actress Milla Jovovich,’’ she says, as the camera jogs around ...Claire Denis concocts a warming sip of ‘Rum’
I don’t want to know how Claire Denis makes movies. Her magic is her business. But I imagine the process is like sculpture. A block of story is whittled and carved until only what’s essential remains. With her, the whittling is a seductive technique. Only in the final scenes of her latest bewitchment, “35 Shots of Rum,’’ do we know ...In ‘This Is It,’ the King of Pop lives on
The announcement earlier this year that Michael Jackson would be doing 50 concerts in London was greeted with equal parts euphoria and cynicism. Was he doing it for us? Was he doing it for money? Then in June, less than a month before the start of the sold-out run, Jackson died of cardiac arrest, and the news that a film ...New ‘Saw’ sequel is a horror flick and a health-care initiative
Here we are a half-dozen movies in and finally some ideas - and what passes for a navigable screenplay - are on display in “Saw VI.’’‘Motherhood’ has a bad day
Whenever a movie requires Uma Thurman to wear glasses, it’s reasonable to think she’ll turn into someone else. Once, in a “Batman’’ movie, she actually did. She’s bespectacled again for “Motherhood,’’ and it saddens me to report that neither she nor this comedy turns into more than an argument against procreation.Chris Rock combs through history of black hair
In the new documentary “Good Hair,’’ Chris Rock finds great comedy in what still lingers as a tragedy. The black compulsion to straighten, lengthen, and lusterize hair comes from an institutional preoccupation with whiteness. And it doesn’t feel like a vestigial preoccupation, either. The black hip-hop music video star Melyssa Ford tells Rock she grew up bitter that she never ...Surviving ‘Antichrist’: How Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe played their grueling roles
As event movies go, there’s been very little like Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist.’’ It’s a shocker about a woman coming to grips with the death of her child by losing her mind, mostly at the expense of her husband. The violence is unsparing, and the woodland air tinged with an air of mysticism. Is the movie misogynistic or about misogyny? ...
In ‘Law Abiding Citizen,’ revenge never seemed so bland
You don’t want to snicker when two rows of parked cars suddenly blow up in “Law Abiding Citizen.’’ But that’s the only response to such desperate moviemaking. There’s no earthly reason for that explosion. Nor is there an explanation for lines like, “I do my job. I’m the best at it. It works.’’ That’s Jamie Foxx to Gerard Butler, but ...‘New York, I Love You’ takes a uniform look at a diverse city
‘New York, I Love You’’ wants us to know that the city is a sexy, romantic, thrillingly random place where anything can go down. Sadly, two of those things are your eyelids.In ‘The Damned United,’ Sheen can really shine
Poor Michael Sheen. For every excellent performance he’s given recently, there’s been someone doing a flashier job in the same movie. In “The Queen,’’ his Tony Blair was a vision of poise and a voice of reason, but Helen Mirren got the Oscar. He was even better in “Frost/Nixon,’’ doing the opposite of what he did with Blair. His David ...‘Earth Days’ examines when the green movement took root
‘Earth Days’’ is the rare ecological documentary that doesn’t nag us to run out of the movie theater and change the world. Not that the environmentalists interviewed would stop us, mind you. But in reconstructing the rise of the American environmental movement, filmmaker Robert Stone creates a simmering, thoughtful, visually absorbing history out of the experiences of a handful of ...Girls of ‘St. Trinian’s’ just want to have fun
What happened to Rupert Everett? He should have been a major movie star. He was so handsome, so debonair, so sophisticatedly English he seemed to be in a tuxedo even when he wasn’t. He was the rare actor whom you could see bantering with just about any woman. Everett was rumored to be the next James Bond (although, who hasn’t ...In ‘Capitalism,’ Moore takes aim at economic oppressors
The scope of Michael Moore’s documentaries gets bigger with each movie. Twenty years ago he told the story of how General Motors undid his hometown, and went on to tackle gun control, the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq war, and health care. Now Moore is going after the entire American economic system. But “Capitalism: A Love Story’’ is redundant ...‘Coco’ has fashion, but lacks real passion
As advertised, “Coco Before Chanel’’ shows us the life of the legendary fashion designer when she was just a skinny, young milliner named Gabrielle. It’s unclear what we’re to learn about Chanel from this movie, aside from the news that she styled herself as a somewhat androgynous rag doll and could do just about anything with a needle and thread. ...Inside the life of French filmmaker
In “The Beaches of Agnès,’’ the effervescent 81-year-old French filmmaker Agnès Varda walks us through the story of her life. But rather than simply give us a guided tour, she explains that, “If you opened me up, you’d find beaches.’’ And so her film is set on her most formative shores, including the Belgian stretch of the North Sea where ...Barrymore delivers fun on wheels
Once in a while, a moviemaker will find it in her heart to make my dreams come true. In Drew Barrymore’s “Whip It,’’ when Juliette Lewis starts a food fight with Ellen Page that turns into about a dozen giggling women rolling around on the floor of a diner covered in condiments, grease, and cream, the movie had won my ...‘Amreeka’ explores the recent Arab immigrant experience in the United States
In “Amreeka,’’ Muna, a Palestinian divorcee, and her bright teenage son, Fadi, move in with her sister’s upper-middle-class family in a small Illinois town. When Muna (Nisreen Faour) takes a job working at White Castle and Fadi (Melkar Muallem) enrolls in public school, the expected culture clashes ensue.Not much to remember in ‘Fame’ remake
It’s not a good sign when the first few minutes of a movie about singing, dancing, rapping, video-camera-wielding teenagers reminds you of a certain grimy horror franchise. But from the minute the camera drifts toward a series of light bulbs arrayed around a single word -- “Fame,’’ done up in the iconic font of the 1980 film -- you could ...Video: Movie reviews
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Take 2 reviews and podcast
Look for new reviews by Ty Burr and Wesley Morris at the end of each week in multiple formats.
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