- Film critic
Wesley Morris
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'Mister Lonely' is a weird sojourn in Wonderland
It takes a special weirdo to empathize with Michael Jackson's discontent. It takes an extra-special one to construct an entire film around Diego Luna as a Jackson impersonator. Luckily, the notorious Harmony Korine, writer of "Kids," director of "Gummo," is just such a weirdo. He begins his baleful, dreamy "Mister Lonely" with a slow-motion shot of a boy on a ...
In 'Fugitive,' a survivor's story that's a little too pretty
"Fugitive Pieces" is a politely made drama about a dull writer named Jakob (Stephen Dillane) and the sad, nervous boy (Robbie Kay) he used to be. The Nazis assassinated Jakob's Polish family during the Holocaust, and he winds up in the loving custody of Athos (Rade Serbedzija), an archeologist who rears him first in his native Greece, then in Toronto.
'Vegas' misses the jackpot
A little insobriety never hurt a romantic comedy. In its whooshing prime, the genre used to feature big cocktail parties where the stars flirted, caroused, and cavorted.
Nostalgia, romance shape Gay and Lesbian film fest
Every spring Boston's well-intended Gay and Lesbian Film Festival corrals handfuls of features, documentaries, and shorts. This year's fest starts tomorrow at the MFA, and I wonder whether this sort of event verges on obsolescence. It's alarming to think that the most progressive gay movie to show up at a theater of any kind in the last two years is ...
Downey Jr. brings Iron Man to life
As you might expect, "Iron Man" is an elemental affair. The ear for dialogue is tin. The directing contains lead. The gases released are mostly sulfuric (although a few of them turn out to be noble). And it all mixes to form that complex compound whose formula we know by heart: the superhero blockbuster. I liked "Iron Man," but the ...
In 'Then She Found Me,' Hunt conceives a stress test
to its last flurry of shots.
On the run from Guantanamo, they never quite break out
"Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay" in record time - just one scene. But the Indian-American med-student stoner and his tense Korean-American roommate remain prisoners of the same cruddy filmmaking that made their trip to White Castle a cult hit in 2003. And the political punch the title promises goes largely undelivered.
A sex thriller neither sexy nor thrilling
Calling your terrible crime thriller "Deception" is like naming your bad cooking movie "Food" - an advertisement for laziness. In a way, that title saves you some guess work. Somebody is getting deceived. In this case, it's Ewan McGregor. He plays Jack, a wimpy accountant who sounds a lot like Woody Allen.
Struggling with a tough hand in 'Deal'
"Deal" is the latest card-tournament drama to suggest that the movies ought to find a more compelling sport, although it's more fun to watch the poker in this movie than the face of its star. Burt Reynolds's eyes, nose, and mouth are all where they were in his swaggering prime, but from certain distances, the surface beneath the features is ...
For young Italian brothers, political and personal passions collide
An Italian movie about two young siblings who take up opposing political ideologies in the 1960s and '70s might sound too allegorical to bear. At what point do they stop being kiosks and start being people? When they fall in love with the same woman? Please. And yet this is very much what Daniele Luchetti's ripe, ferociously acted comic drama ...
A bundle of laughs from two funny women
I feel bad complaining about the current fertility trend in movies, since if I weren't watching women wrestle with pregnancy, I would barely be able to watch them in comedies at all. The genre has been colonized by men who grant women the ability to deliver a baby but rarely a joke. So on these grounds alone "Baby Mama" is ...
'Baby Mama' delivers
I feel bad complaining about the current fertility trend in movies, since if I weren't watching women wrestle with pregnancy, I would barely be able to watch them in comedies at all. The genre has been colonized by men who grant women the ability to deliver a baby but rarely a joke. So on these grounds alone "Baby Mama" is ...
Juliette Binoche has a world of opportunities
A year at the Yale School of Drama costs $25,735. Juilliard is about $1,500 more. And you don't even want to know what an education from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art will set you back. For aspiring movie actors, it would be a lot cheaper just to study the career of Juliette Binoche. A week with her movies might ...
Putting Nikkatsu back on the map
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, if the movies were a kind of mountain range with a lot of the world's great directors at their creative and commercial peaks, the Nikkatsu film studio of Japan represented a summit you couldn't see. Nikkatsu had been around since the silent era, but postwar pop and a Western influence kicked things up ...
'Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?' misses the mark
It's possible that documentary personality Morgan Spurlock thinks the world of the people watching his movies. But he treats them like children. I don't mention this because his first movie since "Super Size Me" happens to be called "Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?," a riff on the title of a children's game and TV show, but because ...
There's not enough time for Pacino to save '88 Minutes'
I'm all for civilized moviegoing. But the only way to survive "88 Minutes," the new Al Pacino serial-killer thriller, aside from skipping it altogether, might be to use it as a drinking game. Whenever a woman's corpse is shown hanging from a pulley, or the movie throws in one of its gratuitous flashbacks, or somebody mentions that Pacino's character is ...
Strangers' bond gives 'The Visitor' its strength
Predictability in a movie is bad only when the filmmakers are too lazy or too weak to move you out of the way of what you can see coming. "The Visitor" is initially predictable in the way that bad movies are predictable. The instant its downbeat central character decides to let a cheery stranger and his girlfriend live with him ...
Grinding out the shlock
It barely matters that "Zombie Strippers" is a tediously overextended satire. It's called "Zombie Strippers." For weeks when I've been bored at the gym, I'd think, "Zombie Strippers!" When I was bored on the train: "Zombie Strippers!" When I was bored of being bored, it was always, "Zombie Strippers!"
A night you won't want to remember
If you're a striving young actress in Hollywood, there are probably worse assignments than "Prom Night." Maybe whatever Hayden Christensen is up to at the moment. But do you think running around a hotel while some has-been hottie (sorry, Johnathon Schaech) tries to stab you and the other ladies in the cast with a hunting knife is going to get ...
War, and no peace, for one soldier
The body in Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue's documentary, "Body of War," belongs to Tomas Young, a 25-year-old soldier who was shot in Sadr City after only five days in Iraq. The body also refers to the congressmen and women who voted, in 2002, to grant the president the unilateral authority to send him there. By making the war's supporters ...
'Kings' cops out, video-game style
In "Street Kings," a hard-boiled Keanu Reeves spends a few intense days trying to find the men who framed him for his ex-police partner's murder. In every sense, the movie is like a Rockstar Games title: The Los Angeles it has reconstructed is endless and complex, but the action is mindless - shoot, kill, win. Reeves, meanwhile, has the kind ...
In 'Smart People,' it's all academic
When Thomas Haden Church is the wisest person in a movie called "Smart People," look out. This is one of those university comedies where the characters take themselves too seriously to be funny, which, come to think of it, seems a reasonable account of some lives on and off the tenure track. But it's a comedy despite the self-seriousness. The ...
One soldier, and war's consequences
The body in Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue's documentary, "Body of War," belongs to Tomas Young, a 25-year-old soldier who was shot in Sadr City after only five days in Iraq. The body also refers to the congressmen and women who voted, in 2002, to grant the president the unilateral authority to send him there. By making the war's supporters ...
A gross and engrossing trip to 'The Ruins'
It's a tough call, really. You, your best friend, and your respective boyfriends go all the way down to Mexico for a little fun in the sun. The hotel pool is fine, and your boyfriends are way cute. It's just like being in America except now you're scared to drink the water. Then this German guy (cute, too) comes over ...
Dancing warriors move to world beat
I'm not a huge fan of war. But if I have to watch a bunch of countries fighting, hands down, my preferred brand of combat is the hip-hop-dance battle. It's like one ferociously choreographed dance in an NFL end zone, only here both teams act like they just scored a touchdown. Everybody's cocky. Everybody's keyed up. Everybody takes turns doing ...
'Leatherheads': Football follies
George Clooney wins frequent comparisons to Clark Gable and Cary Grant. But we don't have to go back that far: 2005's "Good Night, and Good Luck," with its obvious political leanings (to the left, to the left) proved that Clooney is more like Warren Beatty. (He acts, he directs, he deflects the praise he seeks. What a gentleman.) Now they've ...
A mockumentary that's just bluffing
"The Grand" is a defective poker comedy where the poker is a lot more interesting than the people playing it. But the players are all played by people of interest. If Woody Harrelson, Cheryl Hines, Dennis Farina, Richard Kind, David Cross, and Chris Parnell were having a cafeteria lunch together, you'd want a seat at that table. When they're sitting ...
Brazilian 'Vacation' kicks around political and personal upheaval
There's a great movie to be made about life during Brazil's vast political unrest in the late 1960s, '70s, and '80s - the chaos, the ideology, the dictatorship. Cao Hamburger's "The Year My Parents Went on Vacation" is the cute version. The film is set in 1970, and most of it is seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old named ...
Heady players, but no winning formula
With March Madness upon us, now is probably a good time for a documentary about a Cinderella team in search of a fairy NCAA Division III godmother. Say hello to the California Institute of Technology's basketball team, the Beavers. They can build a dam. They just can't build a lead. Based on an introductory montage in Rick Greenwald's "Quantum Hoops," ...
Boy meets boy in a surfside romance
If Gus Van Sant ever made a Lifetime movie disguised as a video for a Jack Johnson song, it might go something like "Shelter," Jonah Markowitz's mellow but soapy drama about a surfer who falls for his best friend's older brother.
Competing plots run 'Fat Boy' off course
What can you say about a movie that features both the blinding loveliness of Thandie Newton and the sight of a man soaked in the contents of a giant foot blister? Stay home. "Run Fat Boy Run," the first movie "Friends" star David Schwimmer has directed, seems to have been packaged at the Farrelly brothers manufacturing plant. The assembly-line work ...
Kimberly Peirce
Kimberly Peirce's complex nature is right there in her name - the soft and the sharp at disarming peace with each other. The filmmaker whose two movies feature a roiling heartland and men named Brandon - 1999's "Boy's Don't Cry," with Hilary Swank and "Stop-Loss," which opens here Friday, with Ryan Phillippe - seems at peace with herself. The gap ...
Lots of ugliness, little loveliness in a small town
The new David Gordon Green movie begins the same way his first movies have: promisingly. In the characteristically beguiling opening sequence, a small-town school marching band rehearses a half-hearted version of Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" on a football field. It's messy, but it's pretty, with the camera zooming in on the underwhelmed music teacher ("Do you have a sledgehammer in your ...
Bullied boys get a superbad bodyguard in 'Drillbit Taylor'
"Drillbit Taylor" sounds like a rediscovered blaxploitation movie or a name near the top of the NFL draft. It's just Owen Wilson's second comedy since it was reported last year that he tried to end his life. Now we have to look at that face and assume we can see sadness between the laugh lines. His stoned sunniness has lost ...
A boy and his (magical mechanical toy) dog
Whenever some news show freaks out over a child prodigy, the kid usually has one trick. Admittedly, it's always impressive: He's been composing full-length operas since he was 3; she hit the world's fastest serve in tennis at 8; he can hack into your bank account between diaper changes. Bravo, boy and girls.
Viral doom made infectiously fun
What is it about London and flesh-eating viruses? In "Doomsday," the year is 2035, and the city is beset by people keeling over with bubbling chins. They've got something called the "Reaper" virus. Yes, the government is desperate for a cure. No, they haven't tried Noxzema. Instead, they've dispatched an elite team of heavily armed specialists, led by the lethally ...
In 'Never Back Down,' teens fight for attention
Call "Never Back Down" "The Karate Kid" for MySpace cadets. Call it "Teen Fight Club." Call it "So You Think You Can Brawl." While you're noticing how this roughhouse drama is just like a bunch of other movies and reality shows, it's worth singling out for courageously showing us what boys really want - sure they're into cars and action ...
Navigating a dark world in 'Sleepwalking'
Charlize Theron is well on her way to being the queen mother of a peculiar type of suffering. She seems fully committed to a career of wet, bloodshot eyes, snotty noses, and a mouth that's always pulled down at the corners. "The Yards," "Monster," "North Country," "In the Valley of Elah," or even "The Italian Job": These are unhappy, unsavory, ...
Bewitching 'Park' is young at heart
"Paranoid Park," the new Gus Van Sant movie, is slight but fascinating. A Portland skateboarder named Alex (Gabe Nevins) gets mixed up in a security guard's murder. The explanation is easy to the point of being anti-dramatic. The movie's actual subject is Van Sant's ongoing preoccupation with the lives of unmoored young men. His art flirts with indecency (he's 55), ...
A challenging education on the slopes of Everest
"Blindsight" has all the conventional trappings of an inspirational documentary. It's about six sightless Chinese and Tibetan teenagers who, in 2004, scaled part of Mount Everest. The movie is about hope and courage and fortitude. It's about beating the odds and defying expectations. But Lucy Walker's movie is also about whether the trip was a good idea in the first ...
