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who also writes: "I walked out when Samantha was throwing condoms all over an Arab state… I wonder if in SATC3, Carrie will not be played by… an enormous tube of product placement lubricant dressed in Alexander McQueeen." [BadHostess] More »
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The reviews are in for Precious, and though some critics object to director Lee Daniels' "need to shove the reality of Precious' life in our faces," most say it's a brilliant film about hideous truths Hollywood usually ignores. More »
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Ouch. And it doesn't get much better, either. More »
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Reviewers are divided on whether Jennifer's Body is a clever satire of friendships between teen girls or like a "thing a cat might bury in a litter box and still keep building the covering because the stench can't be smothered." More »
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While there's plenty of eye rolling and passive-aggressive banter in The September Issue, critics say Anna Wintour doesn't live up to her bitchy reputation. Either she's actually just a decisive boss, or she knew not to berate underlings on camera. More »
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Fans of Quentin Tarantino say Inglourious Basterds is his best film since Pulp Fiction and the most creative World War II movie ever. But other critics are disappointed that (like many Tarantino films) it's just a pointless, bloody revenge fantasy. More »
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Critics loved Ponyo, Hayao Miyazaki's latest film, and said its fantastical images, total lack of CGI, and unconventional female lead (described as a mix of Ralph Wiggum and the Tasmanian Devil) make it this summer's best animated film. More »
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Critics say the Julia Child half of Julie & Julia is wonderful, thanks to Meryl Streep's predictably excellent performance, but even Amy Adams could not make modern day blogger Julie Powell likable. More »
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Though critics say Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is entertaining and well acted, they also worry that its teenage stars are now too attractive. More »
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Half the point of Brüno is to stir up controversy, and it's been successful, with many questioning the film's depiction of homosexuals. But according to critics it's funny, so who cares if it's "the swishy gay equivalent of blackface?" More »
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Monsters vs. Aliens, which opens today, is DreamWorks' first film designed to be shown in 3-D, but despite a female protagonist and fantastic cast of funny men, critics say it's two-dimensional. More »
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Set in Albuquerque, Sunshine Cleaning features a beat up van, a suicide subplot, and Alan Arkin bonding with a cute grandkid. Unsurprisingly, critics can't get over the film's similarity to Little Miss Sunshine. More »
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The Wrestler, the newest film by Darren Aronofsky, stars Mickey Rourke in a Golden Globe-nominated performance as washed-up '80s wrestler Randy Robinson. Did Rourke body-slam this role to movie history? Reviews, after jump. More »
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How did critics treat Doubt, a film starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymor Hoffman and based on the award-winning play by John Patrick Shanley, the film's director/writer? The answer, of course, after the jump. More »
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Rachel Getting Married, the latest offering by director Jonathan Demme, is being acclaimed by many critics as one of Demme's best films to date. The film is centered around the days leading up to Rachel's (Rosemarie DeWitt) wedding and a visit from her eternally rehabbing sister Kym (Anne Hathaway) whose propensity for narcissism and cold snark causes problems for Rachel's wedding. Demme is an accomplished filmmaker who carefully strays from cliched family melodrama and the performance from the normally Disney-ready Hathaway is a refreshing turn for critics who may have been ready to dismiss her as just another Hollywood princess. Considering the overwhelmingly positive reviews, this may not be a film that you would want to skip out on this weekend. The collected reviews after the jump. More »
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Today is the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and with the memoirs and films of the wreckage left after the natural destruction and human mismanagement comes the documentary Trouble The Water. It stands out from previous films about Katrina because it includes first-person footage shot by a woman and her husband who were living in the Ninth Ward when the hurricane hit. That woman is Kimberly Rivers Roberts, an aspiring rapper and self-proclaimed small-time hustler, who bought the camcorder that would document her experience during Katrina a week before the storm touched down. After the storm, she teamed up with documentary filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal to get her personal account out there...and made herself one hell of a movie. The glowing reviews, after the jump. More »
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The X-Files: I Want to Believe premieres today, shrouded in its own set of Clintonian conspiracy theories. Can Agent Scully rekindle our fangirldom? Are our two special agents still an item? Who's the casting director that saw rapper Xzibit and thought “FBI agent?” Oh, and about that plot: it sounds like a mediocre episode of the series itself: an FBI agent goes missing and a pedophile Catholic priest’s psychic rantings may hold the only key to finding her. Agent Scully, who has since become a doctor at a Catholic hospital, and Mulder, who is now a bearded Ted Kaczynski-esque recluse are called up from retirement to decide if they want to believe in the priest's psychic abilities...and their own love. Disappointing details of their middle-aged affair after the jump! More »
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You are probably well aware that the newest Batman movie, The Dark Knight opens today, and that it stars the late Heath Ledger as The Joker. This newest installment in the Batman series is, of course, set in a crime-ridden Gotham, where Batman (Christian Bale) meets The Joker, a super-villain who aims for complete anarchy through senseless violence and destruction. ("Complete anarchy" is probably also an apt description of what to expect during the film's opening weekend: slated to open on a record 4,366 North American screens, industry watchers are predicting a three-day haul of some $135 million. And it's already opened huge in Australia.) As usual, we've collected a selection of reviews from some of the country's movie critics; their take on the film, after the jump. More »
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Heard about Meet Dave? The movie follows a group of aliens from the planet Nil, who, with their captain (Eddie Murphy) travel to Earth in a spaceship/robot named Dave who is also played by Eddie Murphy. Apparently, a mish-mash of fish-out-of-water and space traveling hijincks ensue until Dave meets a young child who warms his heart and convinces everyone to show compassion for one another (sadly, Eddie Murphy's actual child with Mel B. could not do the same for him). Sadly, the film is written by Mystery Science Theater 3000 writer/star Bill Corbett who, like Murphy, also decided to phone it in. More on that, after the jump. More »
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Yes, we know, we already did a Critical Mass today, but, as some of you have noted, there is another movie coming out that may be a little bit more "adult" than an animated children's flick. Wanted is a new action film that revolves around a young Chicago account manager (James McAvoy) who learns that he is actually part of a secret group of super-killers called The Fraternity witih whom he has to join up with to fight the — oh who the fuck cares, this movie also has Angelina Jolie in it. And Morgan Freeman! But is there too much gore? Too many scenes lifted from The Matrix? Too little Jolie de vivre? The reviews, after the jump. More »
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Surely you have heard that we are blessed with not one but two horribly unfunny "comedies" opening this weekend: Mike Myers' The Love Guru and Get Smart starring Steve Carell. Myers, taking a cue from Adam Sandler earlier this year, has decided to put out the comeback comedy that absolutely no one was asking him to make. Some Hindu leaders have urged for a boycott of the film because it is insulting to the Hindu faith, but something tells us that Hindu leaders don't need to work that hard to scare away audiences from this film: Myers goes above and beyond to make this movie unappealing to anyone with the physical ability to laugh. And then there is Get Smart, a film remake of the classic '60s TV show. Although the film stars a cast more lovable than The Love Guru (no one can out-asshole a film that combines Myers, Justin Timberlake, and Jessica Alba) the film's jokes are destined to flop. Did we mention it was an uncalled-for remake? So which movie sucks more? The reviews, after the jump More »
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The summer blockbuster season is upon us, and we all know what that means: a lot fewer female-centered movies. However, as much as movie marketers seem to think every woman wants to see Made of Honor this weekend, many of us actually enjoy a good action flick every once and awhile. Like Iron Man. The first of the big-budget summer blockbusters, Iron Man, is a movie that has, in that annoying, trendy Hollywood jargon, "broad appeal". [Like "broad" as in euphemism for "female"? -Ed.] Robert Downey Jr. plays Tony Stark, an arms dealer with a limitless fortune who becomes Iron Man when he creates a computerized suit that gives him superhero abilities. (Sort of like Inspector Gadget meets Batman.) The real appeal of this movie is not in the stock Marvel Comics plot, but in the attitude and edge that Downey and Gwyneth Paltrow (who plays his assistant) bring to an otherwise standard, explosion-filled, digitally-enhanced film. In fact, film critics seem downright seduced by the film's cynical charm! Their reviews, after the jump. More »
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On Wednesday night one of us attended the premiere of the most intriguing product of the Hollywood "stop paying attention to our traffic violations and start paying attention to us heroically shedding light on international hotspots" wave that was the movie A Mighty Heart. It was not a very good movie, though Angelina Jolie acted the shit out of it and Michael Winterbottom's direction so autistically true to life that we could practically smell the streets of Karachi. (Scent: not so fresh!) No, what seemed to be wrong was the story. It was teeming with requisite ingredients — love, terrorism, horror, goodness, nuance, spies, counterspies, nebbishy journalists, conspiracy theorizing brown people — so teeming you would forgive it if the teemingness was the problem. But it was hollow and small and annoyingly unambitious, and you had trouble caring about Mariane Pearl, who in the final scene of the movie gives birth to her and Daniel Pearl's son alone. (She gives birth alone — why? Because she is a semi-insufferable woman who romanticizes and dramatizes her every action and giving birth alone is supposed to symbolize some great triumph of the human spirit? Or because no one really likes her all that much? Or because putting an Eason Jordan character in the movie would be kinda distracting?) After the jump, Moe weighs in more on the movie and the book that inspired it. More »
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