CARNAGE:  Watch It At Home – Polanski and All-Star Cast Miss the Bullseye   The trick about CARNAGE, which is based on the Tony Award-winning play God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza, is that despite its pedigree, and the big names usually associated with it, it’s more of a game than a revelation.  The […]

> Watch It At Home; Dreary Franchise Moviemaking. In the 137 minutes of Pirates of the Caribbean:  On Stranger Tides, the 4th installment in Disney’s hugely successful franchise (and yes, you have to sit through all 10 minutes of end credits for a not-crucial coda scene), there is exactly one inspired idea.  About halfway through, […]

> If Arthur Schnitzler had only been a member of the WGA in 1900, when he wrote the play La Ronde, and he’d had the benefit of the format rights guild members receive today, he and his descendants would be very rich indeed.  Schnitzler’s concept, a series of sequences in which, initially, Person A meets […]

  On Homevideo and VOD:  At Home In Your Home Morning Glorydidn’t make Rachel McAdams into the new Julia Roberts/Katherine Heigl/Sandra Bullock (it grossed around $53M worldwide), despite the strong pedigree of having been written by Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada), and directed by Roger Michell (Notting Hill). It’s not really a romantic […]

  COLOMBIANA – Not Even For Free:  Even the Body Count Is Dull   For a movie from the Luc Besson House of Action, COLOMBIANA is surprisingly listless and dispirited.  Besson first came to prominence as a director, with pictures like Subway and The Big Blue to his credit; then in 1990, he hit the […]

YOUNG ADULT: Worth A Ticket – Theron + Oswalt = The Real Thing   Charlize Theron plays the hell out of her character Mavis Gary in the new YOUNG ADULT.  Theron has had a curious Hollywood career, with the usual big-budget flops (remember Aeon Flux?) mixed with a clearly wholehearted commitment to difficult, independent projects […]

> Saoirse Ronan stars in Joe Wright’s HANNA, opening April 8. See It On Any Screen Saoirse Ronan only appears in the first 50 minutes or so of Joe Wright’s film of the Ian McEwan novel ATONEMENT, playing the young Briony Tallis (after that, her character ages into Romola Garai, and then Vanessa Redgrave).  This […]

> As has been reported, there really was an ambulance outside the Ryerson Theatre in Toronto after the midnight premiere of Alexandre Courtes’ THE INCIDENT, there to rescue at least one person who had fainted during the movie.  Of course, this may just mean that Toronto Film Festival patrons have delicate sensibilities–an idea supported by […]