[Editor's Note: This is the inaugural installment of a new House feature compiling links to reviews of new and recent theatrical films playing in North America. It is intended as a sampling of critical opinion and not a guide to theaters because, hey, it's a big world. If we've left out any titles, or if you'd like to call our attention to a noteworthy review, feel free to leave a comment below.]
ALEXANDRA. Manohla Dargis, New York Times: "Alexander Sokurov's Alexandra—a film of startling originality and beauty—feels like a communiqué from another time, another place, anywhere but here. Mr. Sokurov, a Russian director best known in America for Russian Ark, makes films so far removed from the usual commercial blather that it sometimes seems as if he's working in a different medium. His work is serious, intense, at times opaque and so feverishly personal that it also feels as if you're being invited into his head, not just another reality." J. Hoberman, Village Voice: "Spare yet tactile, a mysterious mixture of lightness and gravity, Alexander Sokurov's Alexandra is founded on contradiction. Musing on war in general and the Russian occupation of Chechnya in particular, this is a movie in which combat is never shown. The star, octogenarian Galina Vishnevskaya, is an opera diva who never sings."
AMERICAN ZOMBIE. Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times: "Grace Lee's faux documentary takes one of horror cinema's enduring subjects—the undead—and crafts an amusing media satire on our fascination with/fear of marginalized cultures." Ben Sweet, LA Weekly: "Director Grace Lee plays an exaggerated version of herself in this mockumentary, which follows a pair of filmmakers as they shadow four zombies in an effort to infiltrate Los Angeles' undead community...Computers don't exist in their lives (a convenience-store slacker publishes a Xeroxed zine, not a blog); Live Dead, the zombies' annual desert festival, is meant to be a Burning Man stand-in, but its dirty dreadlocked attendees and Ani DiFranco–esque balladeers are more reminiscent of Lollapalooza and Lilith Fair...The best zombie movies shock us into a realization about ourselves and the world in which we live, but how much can zombies teach us when their world so closely resembles 1995?"
BACKSEAT. Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times: "Only in America are adult men who refuse to grow up considered cute rather than developmentally disabled, and only in American movies is masculine immaturity celebrated with such regularity." Ed Gonzalez, Slant: "Essentially a hit-or-miss affair, Backseat features a character who only communicates via text message, an expression of the filmmakers' frustration for the sublimation of human relations that feels amusing but also weird for a film that suggests Sideways filtered through a hipster scrim."
BOARDING GATE. Manohla Dargis, New York Times: "I'm fairly certain one reason that the French director Olivier Assayas made Boarding Gate is that he wanted to watch the Italian actress Asia Argento strut around in black underwear and punishing heels. And why not? Ms. Argento looks delectable if somewhat demented in Boarding Gate, in which she comes across as a postmodern Pearl White, who starred in silent adventure serials like The Perils of Pauline. Ms. Argento seems to invite trouble, and Mr. Assayas, who has a way of capturing the seemingly ineffable, has a thing for troubled, troubling women." Glenn Kenny, Premiere: "This is very much a French intellectual cineaste's idea of a B thriller, and hence is as far from innocent in its genre as you can get. Which is not to say that Assayas deals in bad faith. There are some genuinely frisson-inducing twists, and he does wrap up the plot pretty neatly despite giving every indication that he's not going to. In the meantime, his mastery of the camera and his always innovative approach to setting are constant, knotty pleasures; the Paris of the film's first half is as alien to our perceived ideas of Paris as Godard's Alphaville was, while his Hong Kong is a crumbling labyrinth where the only clues about which corner to turn are provided by cell phone rings." David Edelstein, New York: "Boarding Gate was evidently made quickly and cheaply, and parts of it are fun. It's too bad there's no real viewer equivalent—that you can't watch a film quickly and cheaply." Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times: "The plot may be murky, but actress Asia Argento is a clear and commanding force throughout."
CHAPTER 27. Nick Schager, Slant: "Jared Leto looks like he's eaten his 30 Seconds to Mars bandmates in Chapter 27, a daft, unrevealing based-on-real-events film in which the actor packs on the pounds, habitually fidgets, and indulges in the occasional spazzy freakout in order to embody John Lennon assassin Mark David Chapman during the three days prior to his fateful December 1980 crime." Cynthia Fuchs, PopMatters: "It's established by now that Chapman, at the time of his crime, was full of contradictions, yearning to be like and pay tribute to Holden Caulfield, obsessed with and repelled by 'phonies,' seeking fame by killing the most famous man in the world. Confused and profoundly vulnerable, in J.P. Schaefer's film he is also calculating and judgmental, determined to forge order out of his own psychic and emotional chaos. His resolve inspired by a fictional character, Chapman's insanity is here plain and not quite harrowing: he rides into the city in a cab, his profile set in deep, dark close-up as he worries out loud about the ducks Holden worried about; in a cozy bookstore, he discovers the Wizard of Oz postcard he will leave so ominously in his hotel room dresser. Every moment, every look, every brief interaction is here weighted with intent and possible meaning."
THE COOL SCHOOL. Nick Schaeger, Slant: "In the '50s and '60s, Los Angeles transformed itself from an artistic wasteland into a burgeoning mecca of modern art, thereby confirming there was more to the world of painting, sculpture, and photography than what was happening in Paris and New York. With narration from Jeff Bridges, Morgan Neville's The Cool School details this vital period of creativity, in which a group of young artists championed by curator Walter Hopps at his famous Ferus gallery (1957 - 1966) made great strides in the areas of abstract expressionism and assemblage." Manohla Dargis, New York Times: "It's an old story in some ways, a myth-making tale of a group of post-World War II aesthetic adventurers who, working together and alone, created an exciting American moment. Given the lingering prejudice of some East Coasters and the inferiority complex of select West Coasters, though, it's also a story that deserves to be told often and as loudly as possible." Michael Joshua Rowin, IndieWire: "It's hard to avoid faint praise even when recommending Morgan Neville's I, which recounts Los Angeles' frequently overshadowed 1950s and 1960s art scene. As 'Scenes of Yesteryear' documentaries go it does right by its subject, providing an illuminating primer on a lesser-known strand of America's eruptive postwar art movement, even as it doesn't do much aesthetically to distinguish itself from the pack."
FLAWLESS. Scott Foundas, LA Weekly: "In director Michael Radford's latest, Demi Moore stars as the sole female executive at the fictional London Diamond Corporation, who, upon learning she's about to get the boot, teams with a crafty cockney night janitor (Michael Caine) to empty the corporate vault of its 100-million-pound inventory. Rife with the lipstick traces of Inside Man, The League of Gentlemen (which it explicitly references) and countless other superior heist pictures, Flawless is the sort of movie that tends to get called "enjoyably old-fashioned," except that there's nothing enjoyable about it." Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: "Caine--who, contrary to common critical opinion, is perfectly capable of giving a dull or misjudged performance--redeems this film almost wholesale." Desson Thomson, Washington Post: "Flawless makes an entertainingly nostalgic journey to old Britain—that black-and-white world we remember from long-ago Alfred Hitchcock and David Lean movies."
A FOUR LETTER WORD. Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times: "With its breezy shots of male genitalia and characters nicknamed Long John and Tripod, A Four Letter Word is a surprisingly endearing romantic comedy that explores gay relationships with low-budget verve." Ed Gonzalez, The Village Voice: "Shot in and around New York City's queer hot spots (I see Vlada! I see Boys Room—the new one!), and brought to you in part by Manhunt, Andreas's pun-choked rom-com asks only for our passive identification, preening on the same wavelength as Jesse Archer's Luke, who sets out to prove that he is neither exception nor stereotype, only exceptional, after Stephen (Charlie David)—a hustler, professed top, and Luke's future boy toy—calls him 'a gay cliché.' 'All our world sees of our community is you,' says Stephen, almost as if he were describing the film."
THE GRAND. Jim Ridley, Village Voice: "Great movies about gambling—Robert Altman's California Split, say, or Jacques Demy's Bay of Angels—concern almost everything but the rules of the game or even the outcome of the wager. What matters are faces, surroundings, sharp talk, and the behavior of people in the grip of fixation—people undaunted by losing, yet unappeased by winning. The Grand, a largely improvised comedy set at a Las Vegas poker championship, isn't as good or tough-minded as those movies. But it earns a seat at the table anyway, mostly because it's funny—sometimes very funny." Cynthia Fuchs, PopMatters: "Werner Herzog plays The German. In another movie, this might be all you need to know. But in Zak Penn's improvisational comedy, this delicious detail is slightly less meaningful. Though Herzog spends several minutes in mock-interview mode, describing how essential it is for him 'to kill something each day,' these are fleeting and generally overwhelmed by the rest of the movie's awkward unfunniness." Philip Marchand, Toronto Star: "Just shy of being a first-rate comedy." Jan Stuart, Newsday: "Why don't mockumentaries ever go after targets worth the mocking?"
HATS OFF. Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times: "A documentary tribute to the 93-year-old actress Mimi Weddell, one of those people for whom the word 'individual' seems especially apt. Widowed at 65 by a husband who left only unpaid bills and fond memories, the indomitable Ms. Weddell saw an opportunity to follow her passion. 'I love illusion,' she says, describing an acting career that has paid her bills for almost three decades. From Law & Order to Sex and the City, from vampire movies to cheese commercials, this remarkable woman has compiled a résumé that defies the industry's rampant ageism." Matthew Margini, Washington Square News: "That a 63-year-old woman could give birth caused comedian Patton Oswalt to dismiss science as being 'all about coulda, not shoulda.' Such words gnaw at Mimi Weddell, who treats her age as just a minor impediment to stardom, glamor and theatrical nobility. The new documentary Hats Off examines Weddell's mystique from a number of entertaining angles, but doesn't necessarily share (or preach) her unique perspective, which is at times stubbornly airy and self-obsessed." Nick Schager, Slant: "Quaint and slight, Hats Off revolves around Mimi Weddell, a 93-year-old model and actress (of stage and screen) whose boundless energy and indefatigable spirit are amazing...ly ho-hum."
JUST ADD WATER. Ernest Hardy, LA Weekly: "There's really only one reason to check out Just Add Water, and it's Dylan Walsh's wistful, smiling-through-the-melancholy performance as Ray, a man so defeated by life that he can no longer muster any resistance to the daily humiliations he suffers at home and at his blue-collar job. After discovering duplicity in his own home, Ray shakes off the doldrums, goes after the woman of his dreams and finally stands up to the Neanderthal teen bullies in his neighborhood. Unfortunately, bracketing Walsh's thoughtful performance is a depiction of small-town, working-class life that swims in both formulaic indie-flick irony and Hollywood condescension." John Anderson, Variety: "Whimsy and the macabre are the operating systems in Just Add Water, and they're not always complementary."
MY BROTHER IS AN ONLY CHILD. A.O. Scott, New York Times: "A lively minor addendum to the grand tradition of Italian fraternal cinema." Ed Gonzalez, Slant: My Brother Is an Only Child—whose title I've yet to completely wrap my mind around—moves so playfully and briskly you may not notice its glibness, which may have been director Daniele Luchetti's intent." Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice: "The family as microcosm of a divided country: Two brothers 'come of age' in late-'60s Italy, as political strife reaches their provincial Latina (a city laid out by Mussolini's government)...If expectedly cynical about junior black-shirt hooliganism, Daniele Luchetti's film is also ambivalent about how piggishness takes the guise of 'free love' among the left, and deadpan funny with its 'de-fascisized' performance of 'Ode to Joy' at a student-occupied conservatory." David Edelstein, New York: "What makes My Brother Is an Only Child so alive and entertaining is how it dramatizes the endless tug-of-war between political conviction and personal experience—the way the lines twist and blur and finally implode." Armond White, New York Press: "Luchetti's film continues the Italian tradition of movies that simultaneously explore family life and national politics...The broken-down house the boys grow up in (from which Accio eventually liberates them to better digs) is, of course, a symbol for Italy itself."
PRICELESS. Ed Gonzalez, Slant: "Pierre Salvadori's re-imagining (read: vulgarization) of Breakfast at Tiffany's wears its contempt on its sleeve." Vadim Rizov, Village Voice: "Priceless begins as standard, unconvincing, assembly-line French farce and ends as a cop-out, feel-good rom-com. In between, it develops into something considerably more interesting." Raphaela Weissman, New York Press: "The American poster for the French comedy Priceless shows an elegantly dressed Audrey Tautou surrounded by four hands offering up expensive baubles. From this, we can glean the basic plot: The adorable pixie from Amélie plays a gold-digger. It's not inaccurate, but it is misleading. While the publicity's focus is on Tautou, an actress Americans immediately recognize (she also starred in an art-house flick called The Da Vinci Code), Priceless belongs to her co-star, Gad Elmaleh, who lends the film the bulk of its charm, originality and genuine humor." Stephen Holden, New York Times: "Because its shenanigans are so improbable, Priceless is too frivolous even to be called satire."
RUN, FAT BOY, RUN. Eric Kohn, New York Press: "Even Simon Pegg has repeatedly underutilized the distinct comedic appeal of Simon Pegg. Run, Fat Boy, Run, the directorial debut of David Schwimmer—inextricably identifiable as Ross from "Friends"—gives Pegg a screenplay credit, suggesting that he has written to his weaknesses. In both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, Edgar Wright's sly genre deconstructions, Pegg mimics the audience's thrill of being adrift in fantastical conflict with wide-eyed incredulousness and a goofy demeanor. Akin to the underdog appeal of slapstick artists like Buster Keaton, the pathetic nature of Pegg's characters hardens into a heroic streak. In Fat Boy, playing an out-of-shape security guard who runs a marathon to prove his worthiness to an ex-girlfriend, Pegg just seems pathetic." Matt Prigge, Philadelphia Weekly: "Did the guy who came up with hurling second-rate Prince records at zombies really dream up a gag about a volcanic foot boil being popped in some poor guy's face?" David Edelstein, New York: "The director, David Schwimmer, underlines the jokes and adds exclamation points, but a softer touch probably wouldn't have helped." Matt Zoller Seitz, New York Times: "Run, Fat Boy, Run is the kind of movie that's apt to be dismissed a goofy lark. It is that. But it's also a rare comedy that believes in its own message, and that could inspire the depressed and the demoralized to grit their teeth and keep running."
SHELTER. Chuck Wilson, LA Weekly: "Zach (Trevor Wright) is a promising artist who turned down CalArts to stay in San Pedro and help his irresponsible older sister (played by the amazingly gifted L.A. actress Tina Holmes) care for her little boy. At the beach, Zach, who surfs as often as possible, reconnects with his best friend's gay-novelist older brother, Shaun (Brad Rowe). The two start hanging out and eventually begin an affair, Zach's first with a man. Like much of this impressive first film from writer-director Jonah Markowitz, Zach and Shaun's relationship feels authentic and true; you can imagine them being together for a long time to come." Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times: "The movie's abundance of tanned bodies, rolling waves and golden sunsets create an aesthetic of inoffensive hedonism that perfectly matches the subject matter." Fernando F. Croce, Slant: "The first project of the here! gay television network's new movie initiative, Shelter regrettably plays closer to Lifetime fodder."
SHOTGUN STORIES. David Edelstein, New York: "The story is set in southeast Arkansas, against a landscape of isolated farms and dilapidated main streets, and the rhythms are languid; but the lines that pop out of these stuporous characters' mouths have the bitter tang of real life." Steven Boone, The House Next Door: "Glorious Southern fried sloth, in epic widescreen." Matt Zoller Seitz, New York Times. "Jeff Nichols's drama about warring clans of brothers in small-town southern Arkansas defines the classic western phrase 'doing what a man's got to do' as both a moral imperative and a biological compulsion. The movie is filled with unremarkable men who would rather die than appear weak."
STOP-LOSS. Alonso Duralde, MSNBC.com: "Even if you think the U.S. presence in Iraq is justified, Kimberly Peirce's Stop-Loss provides a poignant and shattering portrait of what our soldiers have to endure in combat, at home, and from an army that sends its men and women back into battle over and over again." Sean Burns, Philadelphia Weekly: "Comprised of bitter, beautifully observed truths butting up uncomfortably against loads of hoary Hollywood hooey, writer/director Kimberly Peirce's extremely well-meaning Stop-Loss attempts to battle the trend of audience indifference toward Iraq War dramas. But the movie's real war is with itself." A.O. Scott, New York Times: "The sober, mournful piety that has characterized a lot of the other fictional features about Iraq—documentaries are another matter—is almost entirely missing from Stop-Loss, which is being distributed by Paramount's youth-friendly label MTV Films. Not that the movie is unsentimental—far from it—but its messy, chaotic welter of feeling has a tang of authenticity. Instead of high-minded indignation or sorrow, it runs on earthier fuel: sweat, blood, beer, testosterone, loud music and an ideologically indeterminate, freewheeling sense of rage." Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: "This is a wrenching story of men at arms who cannot find peace outside the military circle, who return to civilian life on the horrific edge of violence and despair. In this Stop-Loss has a certain amount in common with Boys Don't Cry. Peirce again concerns herself with men and violence as well as with individuals conflicted over gender roles trying to work out what society demands of them." Stephanie Zacharek, Salon: "Peirce makes her points, all right. She just doesn't trust us to get them."
21. Alonso Duralde, MSNBC.com: "One would expect a movie about high-stakes gambling in Las Vegas and young, attractive savants using their smarts to break the bank at blackjack to be sexy and thrilling. Unfortunately, 21 winds up being about as exciting as freshman calculus." Manohla Dargis, New York Times: "Greed is good and comes without a hint of conscience in 21, a feature-length bore about some smarty-pants who take Vegas for a ride." Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: "21 isn't pretentious, exactly, but it's damn close, and in trying to whip up a melodramatic morality tale the film becomes an increasingly flabby slog." Robert Wilonsky, LA Weekly: "The big-screen version of Ben Mezrich's book ain't no gamble at all—it's about as risky as playing the nickel slots with 10 cents in your pocket. It's as though director Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde, Monster-in-Law) and writers Peter Steinfeld (Be Cool, as if) and Allan Loeb adapted the book-jacket blurb rather than crack the spine."
THE BANK JOB. Jim Emerson, Chicago Sun-Times: "A serviceable B-grade British heist movie, "The Bank Job" is no worse than its generic title. And no better." Robert Wilonsky, Dallas Observer: "Statham—reduced to muttering guttural groans in various bombs that close on opening weekend (In the Name of the King, War) or get released directly to DVD (Chaos) or spawn inexplicable franchises (Transporter, Crank)—at last proves himself a leading man who does more than lead with his head. It isn't till the film's end that he has to throw a few punches and land a few head-butts—contractually obligated, no doubt. But by then he's managed to negotiate a screenplay in which there are complete sentences—whole paragraphs, even—that he gives his all without breaking a sweat; even when he has to convince his missus he's a stand-up shitheel, Statham's totally believable. He might yet become Bruce Willis."
BE KIND REWIND. Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: "Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind is whimsy with a capital W. No, it's WHIMSY in all caps. Make that all-caps italic boldface. Oh, never mind. I'm getting too whimsical. Maybe Gondry does, too. You'll have to decide for yourself. This is a movie that takes place in no possible world, which may be a shame, if not for the movie, then for possible worlds." Elbert Ventura, ReverseShot: "Be Kind Rewind contains reminders of the limits of this brilliant artist. That the movie still enthralls is a testament to the fact that Gondry's starting point—an aesthetic in which each frame bears its maker's sensibility—is miles ahead of where most filmmakers aspire to be."
CHICAGO 10. J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader: "Chicago 10, an electrifying new "mash-up documentary" by Brett Morgen, vividly reconstructs the battles on the street and in the courtroom, and it couldn't come at a more opportune moment." Jim Emerson, Chicago Sun-Times: "Through the kaleidoscopic prism of Brett Morgen's uproarious Chicago 10, a zippy mixture of documentary footage and motion-capture animation, we see how the confrontations between police and protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention played out as political theater."
CLOVERFIELD. Oily Richards, Empire: "Wise to the fact that the most frightening attack is the one without apparent reason, Cloverfield never chooses to explain its monster's arrival. It's suddenly there and, as one soldier notes, 'it's winning'. It intends to scare, not educate. The constant air of panic is so pervasive that it's easy to miss the skilful creation of the sequences, which include a rescue from a collapsing skyscraper and a tunnel sequence so butt-clenching you'll crap diamonds for a week." Keith Phipps, Onion A/V Club: "It's absolutely terrifying, and it's all the more effective for the way it lets viewers spend time getting to know the terrified stars, and the emotions and regrets behind their seemingly futile efforts to survive. It puts human faces on the victims of mass destruction, faces that might easily have been yours or mine, staring down the maw of something we don't understand." J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader: "[Producer J.J.] Abrams may be exploiting images of a national trauma, but politicians have been doing the same thing for years in pursuit of even less noble ends: the $10 you'll spend on Cloverfield hardly compares with the estimated $487 billion spent to date on the war in Iraq." Richard Corliss, Time: "A horror/sf/disaster movie loses points every time you're forced to ask yourself, 'Why are they doing something so stupid?', and the answer is, 'Because they're in a horror/sf/disaster movie.' And if you thought that Abrams—the creator of Felicity, Alias and Lost, and the writer-director of the spiffy if underperforming Mission: Impossible III—would produce a horror movie that was not just high-concept but high-IQ—you misjudge his faithfulness to a genre requiring that, in extremis, people act in a manner that's way below their intelligence levels." Stephanie Zacharek, Salon: "Is Cloverfield trying to be a 'fun' monster movie, or is it trying to say something about the way, post-9/11, we experience horrific events? I simply have no idea."
THE COUNTERFEITERS. Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: " For the prisoners in Blocks 18 and 19 of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, meals were served, beds provided, light opera floated from the speakers. There was even a ping-pong table to play on. But as writer-director Stefan Ruzowitzky shows, powerfully, affectingly, in The Counterfeiters, the privileges experienced by this small team of Jews and criminals came at a price." David Denby, The New Yorker: "The Counterfeiters is a testament to guile." Adam Bernstein, Washington Post: "Based on a real-life Nazi operation, the film is a tense drama with performances that elevate the movie to the front rank of films set in concentration camps, from Gillo Pontecorvo's magnificent 1959 drama Kapo to Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List of 1993."
DIARY OF THE DEAD. Jim Emerson, The Chicago Sun-Times: "When young filmmakers gather to shoot cinema-verite video documentaries, watch out: Something really bad is going to happen. In The Blair Witch Project, it was...well, we don't really know what it was, but it sure freaked out Heather. In Cloverfield, it was something large with an antipathy toward Manhattan landmarks. And in George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead, as you have probably gathered by now, it is the meat-eating undead. These movies give the shaky-cam a reason to get shaky—but the kids try not to miss a shot." David Edelstein, New York: "Compared with other first-person motion-sickness horror pictures like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead is weak tea, yet there's enough social commentary (and innovative splatter) to acidulate the brew—to remind you that Romero, even behind the curve, makes other genre filmmakers look like fraidy-cats." J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader: "Diary of the Dead proceeds as if the events of the first four movies never happened, starting over in the present with a handful of film students whose no-budget shoot for a mummy thriller is interrupted by an outbreak of zombie violence. The premise allows Romero a second childhood of sorts, a chance to revisit the independent spirit of his first big hit even as he reflects on how much America has changed in the past 40 years."
DOOMSDAY. Gideon Levy, UnderGroundOnline: "The most fun thing about Doomsday was watching a generic action flick run the gamut from near-future militarism to post-apoc tribal punkland to the Dark Ages without any boring plot twists to slow down the shoot & slash & run & kill. When they get to the souped-up sports car that appears out of nowhere, you're ready for the chase scene & big boom at the end. If only the action scenes - the only backbone holding together this otherwise paper-thin film - weren't so lazily and poorly edited, I could've really enjoyed this film that made no pretenses to being more than it was." Matt Zoller Seitz, The New York Times: "Doomsday has an appealing punk-rock sneer, but aside from a few clever music cues—including a Fine Young Cannibals song that accompanies a deranged bacchanal given by fine young cannibals—swagger is, unfortunately, its only notable quality." Gina Piccalo, San Francisco Chronicle: "There is no slow build in Doomsday. Geysers of blood, severed limbs and pustule-ravaged faces blanket the opening frames. Then Rhona Mitra's machete-wielding babe with the removable, bionic eyeball shows up to wreak her own pickax-to-the-face brand of havoc, decapitating her way through tribes of Thunderdome-ready cannibals. That's when things really get moving."
DRILLBIT TAYLOR. Keith Uhlich, UnderGroundOnline: "There are worse things, I suppose, than being below-waistline roundhoused by a Hollywood celebrity. Chief among such tortures would be experiencing the complete sense of desperation that marks Drillbit Taylor's each and every scene ." A.O. Scott, New York Times: "'You get what you pay for,' the tag line on the advertisement says. I saw it free, and I still feel cheated." Raphaela Weissman, New York Press: "Its comedy falls flat, and the film has a violent core where its heart should be." Xan Brooks, The Guardian: "The final bell can't come soon enough."
FROWNLAND. Matt Zoller Seitz, The House Next Door: "It's a horror film about everyday life in which characters who fail to recognize their own freakish aspects behave monstrously toward others: Marty by way of Eraserhead." Daniel Cockburn, ReverseShot: "Its 100%-celluloid material and Method-ish performances may be just more convention, but all these conventions counterbalance to create something new."
FUNNY GAMES. Fernando F. Croce, The House Next Door: "Michael Haneke is a clever guy. I promised myself I'd never revisit his 1997 film Funny Games, yet he's tricked me into doing just that by remaking it, shot by agonizing shot...The plot is still The Desperate Hours rewritten by the Marquis De Sade." David Edelstein, New York: "Naomi Watts produced this remake, apparently concluding that she hadn't yet been sufficiently violated onscreen. King Kong, after all, turned out to be a softy—now she's in the hairy paw of a giant ape artiste."
THE HAMMER. Matt Zoller Seitz, New York Times: "The synopsis of The Hammer makes it sound like a long-lost Billy Crystal movie: a smart-alecky, self-destructive Los Angeles handyman named Jerry Ferro (Adam Carolla) loses his job and his girlfriend, then reconnects with his past as a Golden Gloves boxer and tries to qualify for the United States Olympic team at 40. Mr. Carolla, an amateur boxer and cable television veteran, has a tendency to riff when he should be acting, and the whole project—written by Kevin Hench and directed by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld (Kissing Jessica Stein)—is rambling and disorganized. At the same time, though, The Hammer also has dry wit and unforced working-class swagger, and hits some surprising emotional notes."
HORTON HEARS A WHO! A.O. Scott, New York Times: "What distinguishes Horton Hears a Who! from the other recent Dr. Seuss film adaptations—How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Cat in the Hat, in case you need reminding—is that it is not one of the worst movies ever made." Dennis Cozzalio, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule: "An inspired CGI comedy that honors the spirit of the good doctor's story even as it expands upon it thematically." Matt Zoller Seitz, The House Next Door: "The ratio of innocent enthusiasm to commercial cartoon formula is higher than I expected. Co-directors Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino, scriptwriters Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio and the animators from Blue Sky (the Ice Age studio) have managed to adapt Seuss without turning him out, which I guess counts as progress."
IN BRUGES. Bilge Ebiri, Nerve: " Way more engaging than a bantering-hitman-with-a-heart picture released in 2008 has any right to be, Martin McDonagh's In Bruges might have made serious waves back in 1994. Today it feels like a mysterious creature from another age—devoid of grit or naturalism, and shot with a composed elegance largely missing from today's screens. In other words, it's a fairy tale with guns and exploding heads. That's its blessing and its curse." Lauren Wissot, The House Next Door: "Often it feels that McDonagh's script is as adrift as one of the boats on the shimmering canals. The pace is too slow, at times lagging behind the adrenalin-packed story, the film relying heavily on Carter Burwell's theatrical score. But perhaps the most disturbing thing about In Bruges is its predictable ending."
IRINA PALM: A.O. Scott, New York Times. "Irina Palm may be the work of a German-born Belgian director, but it belongs to a sturdy and very British genre: the naughty-granny comedy, in which an older woman is liberated and rejuvenated by an excursion into vice." Jim Ridley, LA Weekly: "Nobody can reduce tawdry material to doddering quaintness like the British, but this staggeringly inane joint effort of U.K., Belgian, French, German and Luxembourgian film financing represents a true coalition of the witless."
JAR CITY. A.O. Scott, New York Times: "The picture of Iceland that emerges in Baltasar Kormákur's Jar City is vivid and powerful but not something the country's tourist board would be likely to endorse. The landscape has its austere poetry to be sure—mountains framing the apartment blocks of Reykjavik, spits of volcanic rock jutting into a churning sea—but a fog of damp unhappiness seems to pervade every face and conversation. And yet by the end of this film, based on a popular mystery novel by Arnaldur Indridason, it is hard not to feel a certain affection for the place." Lauren Wissot, The House Next Door: "This is not just a fictional story about a couple who lose their four-year-old girl to a brain tumor, nor just a tale about the search for a murderer and his motive, but an intriguing blend of the two, overlaid by a Big Brother that takes the form of the nonfiction, controversial deCODE Genetics Inc., a company specializing in genetic research that, several years ago, received access to all medical files in the Icelandic government's database. Invasion of privacy or scientific necessity? As a government stand-in character argues near the beginning of the film, information isn't 'personal' since it's been passed on for generations. Rather, it belongs to society. But does society have a right to know about every disease, even those that can't be cured?"
JUNO. Fernando F. Croce, Slant: "Lke the titular character's accidental pregnancy, Juno has a fumbling start and an affecting delivery." Elbert Ventura, ReverseShot: "Juno is occasionally funny, rarely intelligent, and often annoying. A crowd-pleaser for people who like to think they're above crowd-pleasers but are actually not." Stephanie Zacharek, Salon: "Juno doesn't make judgments or pronouncements. Its great beauty lies in how generous it is toward all its characters." Richard Schickel, Time: "Juno is not a great movie; it does not have aspirations in that direction. But it is, in its little way, a truthful, engaging and welcome entertainment." Marcy Dermansky, About.com: "Though too precocious and polished, Juno manages to charm, with many lovely moments. In the tradition of maladjusted teen comedies, however, Juno doesn't rank among the recent greats." Lauren Wissot, The House Next Door: "Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody has described herself as a 'naked Margaret Mead,' a cultural anthropologist who for years studied the rites and rituals of the stripper tribe in lieu of the nine-to-five grind. It's a great line and a quite telling one, for this writer's scientific approach to life is precisely why
[Editor's Note: This is the inaugural installment of a new House feature compiling links to reviews of new and recent theatrical films playing in North America. It is intended as a sampling of critical opinion and not a guide to theaters because, hey, it's a big world. If we've left out any titles, or if you'd like to call our attention to a noteworthy review, feel free to leave a comment below.]
ALEXANDRA. Manohla Dargis, New York Times: "Alexander Sokurov's Alexandra—a film of startling originality and beauty—feels like a communiqué from another time, another place, anywhere but here. Mr. Sokurov, a Russian director best known in America for Russian Ark, makes films so far removed from the usual commercial blather that it sometimes seems as if he's working in a different medium. His work is serious, intense, at times opaque and so feverishly personal that it also feels as if you're being invited into his head, not just another reality." J. Hoberman, Village Voice: "Spare yet tactile, a mysterious mixture of lightness and gravity, Alexander Sokurov's Alexandra is founded on contradiction. Musing on war in general and the Russian occupation of Chechnya in particular, this is a movie in which combat is never shown. The star, octogenarian Galina Vishnevskaya, is an opera diva who never sings."
AMERICAN ZOMBIE. Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times: "Grace Lee's faux documentary takes one of horror cinema's enduring subjects—the undead—and crafts an amusing media satire on our fascination with/fear of marginalized cultures." Ben Sweet, LA Weekly: "Director Grace Lee plays an exaggerated version of herself in this mockumentary, which follows a pair of filmmakers as they shadow four zombies in an effort to infiltrate Los Angeles' undead community...Computers don't exist in their lives (a convenience-store slacker publishes a Xeroxed zine, not a blog); Live Dead, the zombies' annual desert festival, is meant to be a Burning Man stand-in, but its dirty dreadlocked attendees and Ani DiFranco–esque balladeers are more reminiscent of Lollapalooza and Lilith Fair...The best zombie movies shock us into a realization about ourselves and the world in which we live, but how much can zombies teach us when their world so closely resembles 1995?"
BACKSEAT. Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times: "Only in America are adult men who refuse to grow up considered cute rather than developmentally disabled, and only in American movies is masculine immaturity celebrated with such regularity." Ed Gonzalez, Slant: "Essentially a hit-or-miss affair, Backseat features a character who only communicates via text message, an expression of the filmmakers' frustration for the sublimation of human relations that feels amusing but also weird for a film that suggests Sideways filtered through a hipster scrim."
BOARDING GATE. Manohla Dargis, New York Times: "I'm fairly certain one reason that the French director Olivier Assayas made Boarding Gate is that he wanted to watch the Italian actress Asia Argento strut around in black underwear and punishing heels. And why not? Ms. Argento looks delectable if somewhat demented in Boarding Gate, in which she comes across as a postmodern Pearl White, who starred in silent adventure serials like The Perils of Pauline. Ms. Argento seems to invite trouble, and Mr. Assayas, who has a way of capturing the seemingly ineffable, has a thing for troubled, troubling women." Glenn Kenny, Premiere: "This is very much a French intellectual cineaste's idea of a B thriller, and hence is as far from innocent in its genre as you can get. Which is not to say that Assayas deals in bad faith. There are some genuinely frisson-inducing twists, and he does wrap up the plot pretty neatly despite giving every indication that he's not going to. In the meantime, his mastery of the camera and his always innovative approach to setting are constant, knotty pleasures; the Paris of the film's first half is as alien to our perceived ideas of Paris as Godard's Alphaville was, while his Hong Kong is a crumbling labyrinth where the only clues about which corner to turn are provided by cell phone rings." David Edelstein, New York: "Boarding Gate was evidently made quickly and cheaply, and parts of it are fun. It's too bad there's no real viewer equivalent—that you can't watch a film quickly and cheaply." Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times: "The plot may be murky, but actress Asia Argento is a clear and commanding force throughout."
CHAPTER 27. Nick Schager, Slant: "Jared Leto looks like he's eaten his 30 Seconds to Mars bandmates in Chapter 27, a daft, unrevealing based-on-real-events film in which the actor packs on the pounds, habitually fidgets, and indulges in the occasional spazzy freakout in order to embody John Lennon assassin Mark David Chapman during the three days prior to his fateful December 1980 crime." Cynthia Fuchs, PopMatters: "It's established by now that Chapman, at the time of his crime, was full of contradictions, yearning to be like and pay tribute to Holden Caulfield, obsessed with and repelled by 'phonies,' seeking fame by killing the most famous man in the world. Confused and profoundly vulnerable, in J.P. Schaefer's film he is also calculating and judgmental, determined to forge order out of his own psychic and emotional chaos. His resolve inspired by a fictional character, Chapman's insanity is here plain and not quite harrowing: he rides into the city in a cab, his profile set in deep, dark close-up as he worries out loud about the ducks Holden worried about; in a cozy bookstore, he discovers the Wizard of Oz postcard he will leave so ominously in his hotel room dresser. Every moment, every look, every brief interaction is here weighted with intent and possible meaning."
THE COOL SCHOOL. Nick Schaeger, Slant: "In the '50s and '60s, Los Angeles transformed itself from an artistic wasteland into a burgeoning mecca of modern art, thereby confirming there was more to the world of painting, sculpture, and photography than what was happening in Paris and New York. With narration from Jeff Bridges, Morgan Neville's The Cool School details this vital period of creativity, in which a group of young artists championed by curator Walter Hopps at his famous Ferus gallery (1957 - 1966) made great strides in the areas of abstract expressionism and assemblage." Manohla Dargis, New York Times: "It's an old story in some ways, a myth-making tale of a group of post-World War II aesthetic adventurers who, working together and alone, created an exciting American moment. Given the lingering prejudice of some East Coasters and the inferiority complex of select West Coasters, though, it's also a story that deserves to be told often and as loudly as possible." Michael Joshua Rowin, IndieWire: "It's hard to avoid faint praise even when recommending Morgan Neville's I, which recounts Los Angeles' frequently overshadowed 1950s and 1960s art scene. As 'Scenes of Yesteryear' documentaries go it does right by its subject, providing an illuminating primer on a lesser-known strand of America's eruptive postwar art movement, even as it doesn't do much aesthetically to distinguish itself from the pack."
FLAWLESS. Scott Foundas, LA Weekly: "In director Michael Radford's latest, Demi Moore stars as the sole female executive at the fictional London Diamond Corporation, who, upon learning she's about to get the boot, teams with a crafty cockney night janitor (Michael Caine) to empty the corporate vault of its 100-million-pound inventory. Rife with the lipstick traces of Inside Man, The League of Gentlemen (which it explicitly references) and countless other superior heist pictures, Flawless is the sort of movie that tends to get called "enjoyably old-fashioned," except that there's nothing enjoyable about it." Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: "Caine--who, contrary to common critical opinion, is perfectly capable of giving a dull or misjudged performance--redeems this film almost wholesale." Desson Thomson, Washington Post: "Flawless makes an entertainingly nostalgic journey to old Britain—that black-and-white world we remember from long-ago Alfred Hitchcock and David Lean movies."
A FOUR LETTER WORD. Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times: "With its breezy shots of male genitalia and characters nicknamed Long John and Tripod, A Four Letter Word is a surprisingly endearing romantic comedy that explores gay relationships with low-budget verve." Ed Gonzalez, The Village Voice: "Shot in and around New York City's queer hot spots (I see Vlada! I see Boys Room—the new one!), and brought to you in part by Manhunt, Andreas's pun-choked rom-com asks only for our passive identification, preening on the same wavelength as Jesse Archer's Luke, who sets out to prove that he is neither exception nor stereotype, only exceptional, after Stephen (Charlie David)—a hustler, professed top, and Luke's future boy toy—calls him 'a gay cliché.' 'All our world sees of our community is you,' says Stephen, almost as if he were describing the film."
THE GRAND. Jim Ridley, Village Voice: "Great movies about gambling—Robert Altman's California Split, say, or Jacques Demy's Bay of Angels—concern almost everything but the rules of the game or even the outcome of the wager. What matters are faces, surroundings, sharp talk, and the behavior of people in the grip of fixation—people undaunted by losing, yet unappeased by winning. The Grand, a largely improvised comedy set at a Las Vegas poker championship, isn't as good or tough-minded as those movies. But it earns a seat at the table anyway, mostly because it's funny—sometimes very funny." Cynthia Fuchs, PopMatters: "Werner Herzog plays The German. In another movie, this might be all you need to know. But in Zak Penn's improvisational comedy, this delicious detail is slightly less meaningful. Though Herzog spends several minutes in mock-interview mode, describing how essential it is for him 'to kill something each day,' these are fleeting and generally overwhelmed by the rest of the movie's awkward unfunniness." Philip Marchand, Toronto Star: "Just shy of being a first-rate comedy." Jan Stuart, Newsday: "Why don't mockumentaries ever go after targets worth the mocking?"
HATS OFF. Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times: "A documentary tribute to the 93-year-old actress Mimi Weddell, one of those people for whom the word 'individual' seems especially apt. Widowed at 65 by a husband who left only unpaid bills and fond memories, the indomitable Ms. Weddell saw an opportunity to follow her passion. 'I love illusion,' she says, describing an acting career that has paid her bills for almost three decades. From Law & Order to Sex and the City, from vampire movies to cheese commercials, this remarkable woman has compiled a résumé that defies the industry's rampant ageism." Matthew Margini, Washington Square News: "That a 63-year-old woman could give birth caused comedian Patton Oswalt to dismiss science as being 'all about coulda, not shoulda.' Such words gnaw at Mimi Weddell, who treats her age as just a minor impediment to stardom, glamor and theatrical nobility. The new documentary Hats Off examines Weddell's mystique from a number of entertaining angles, but doesn't necessarily share (or preach) her unique perspective, which is at times stubbornly airy and self-obsessed." Nick Schager, Slant: "Quaint and slight, Hats Off revolves around Mimi Weddell, a 93-year-old model and actress (of stage and screen) whose boundless energy and indefatigable spirit are amazing...ly ho-hum."
JUST ADD WATER. Ernest Hardy, LA Weekly: "There's really only one reason to check out Just Add Water, and it's Dylan Walsh's wistful, smiling-through-the-melancholy performance as Ray, a man so defeated by life that he can no longer muster any resistance to the daily humiliations he suffers at home and at his blue-collar job. After discovering duplicity in his own home, Ray shakes off the doldrums, goes after the woman of his dreams and finally stands up to the Neanderthal teen bullies in his neighborhood. Unfortunately, bracketing Walsh's thoughtful performance is a depiction of small-town, working-class life that swims in both formulaic indie-flick irony and Hollywood condescension." John Anderson, Variety: "Whimsy and the macabre are the operating systems in Just Add Water, and they're not always complementary."
MY BROTHER IS AN ONLY CHILD. A.O. Scott, New York Times: "A lively minor addendum to the grand tradition of Italian fraternal cinema." Ed Gonzalez, Slant: My Brother Is an Only Child—whose title I've yet to completely wrap my mind around—moves so playfully and briskly you may not notice its glibness, which may have been director Daniele Luchetti's intent." Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice: "The family as microcosm of a divided country: Two brothers 'come of age' in late-'60s Italy, as political strife reaches their provincial Latina (a city laid out by Mussolini's government)...If expectedly cynical about junior black-shirt hooliganism, Daniele Luchetti's film is also ambivalent about how piggishness takes the guise of 'free love' among the left, and deadpan funny with its 'de-fascisized' performance of 'Ode to Joy' at a student-occupied conservatory." David Edelstein, New York: "What makes My Brother Is an Only Child so alive and entertaining is how it dramatizes the endless tug-of-war between political conviction and personal experience—the way the lines twist and blur and finally implode." Armond White, New York Press: "Luchetti's film continues the Italian tradition of movies that simultaneously explore family life and national politics...The broken-down house the boys grow up in (from which Accio eventually liberates them to better digs) is, of course, a symbol for Italy itself."
PRICELESS. Ed Gonzalez, Slant: "Pierre Salvadori's re-imagining (read: vulgarization) of Breakfast at Tiffany's wears its contempt on its sleeve." Vadim Rizov, Village Voice: "Priceless begins as standard, unconvincing, assembly-line French farce and ends as a cop-out, feel-good rom-com. In between, it develops into something considerably more interesting." Raphaela Weissman, New York Press: "The American poster for the French comedy Priceless shows an elegantly dressed Audrey Tautou surrounded by four hands offering up expensive baubles. From this, we can glean the basic plot: The adorable pixie from Amélie plays a gold-digger. It's not inaccurate, but it is misleading. While the publicity's focus is on Tautou, an actress Americans immediately recognize (she also starred in an art-house flick called The Da Vinci Code), Priceless belongs to her co-star, Gad Elmaleh, who lends the film the bulk of its charm, originality and genuine humor." Stephen Holden, New York Times: "Because its shenanigans are so improbable, Priceless is too frivolous even to be called satire."
RUN, FAT BOY, RUN. Eric Kohn, New York Press: "Even Simon Pegg has repeatedly underutilized the distinct comedic appeal of Simon Pegg. Run, Fat Boy, Run, the directorial debut of David Schwimmer—inextricably identifiable as Ross from "Friends"—gives Pegg a screenplay credit, suggesting that he has written to his weaknesses. In both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, Edgar Wright's sly genre deconstructions, Pegg mimics the audience's thrill of being adrift in fantastical conflict with wide-eyed incredulousness and a goofy demeanor. Akin to the underdog appeal of slapstick artists like Buster Keaton, the pathetic nature of Pegg's characters hardens into a heroic streak. In Fat Boy, playing an out-of-shape security guard who runs a marathon to prove his worthiness to an ex-girlfriend, Pegg just seems pathetic." Matt Prigge, Philadelphia Weekly: "Did the guy who came up with hurling second-rate Prince records at zombies really dream up a gag about a volcanic foot boil being popped in some poor guy's face?" David Edelstein, New York: "The director, David Schwimmer, underlines the jokes and adds exclamation points, but a softer touch probably wouldn't have helped." Matt Zoller Seitz, New York Times: "Run, Fat Boy, Run is the kind of movie that's apt to be dismissed a goofy lark. It is that. But it's also a rare comedy that believes in its own message, and that could inspire the depressed and the demoralized to grit their teeth and keep running."
SHELTER. Chuck Wilson, LA Weekly: "Zach (Trevor Wright) is a promising artist who turned down CalArts to stay in San Pedro and help his irresponsible older sister (played by the amazingly gifted L.A. actress Tina Holmes) care for her little boy. At the beach, Zach, who surfs as often as possible, reconnects with his best friend's gay-novelist older brother, Shaun (Brad Rowe). The two start hanging out and eventually begin an affair, Zach's first with a man. Like much of this impressive first film from writer-director Jonah Markowitz, Zach and Shaun's relationship feels authentic and true; you can imagine them being together for a long time to come." Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times: "The movie's abundance of tanned bodies, rolling waves and golden sunsets create an aesthetic of inoffensive hedonism that perfectly matches the subject matter." Fernando F. Croce, Slant: "The first project of the here! gay television network's new movie initiative, Shelter regrettably plays closer to Lifetime fodder."
SHOTGUN STORIES. David Edelstein, New York: "The story is set in southeast Arkansas, against a landscape of isolated farms and dilapidated main streets, and the rhythms are languid; but the lines that pop out of these stuporous characters' mouths have the bitter tang of real life." Steven Boone, The House Next Door: "Glorious Southern fried sloth, in epic widescreen." Matt Zoller Seitz, New York Times. "Jeff Nichols's drama about warring clans of brothers in small-town southern Arkansas defines the classic western phrase 'doing what a man's got to do' as both a moral imperative and a biological compulsion. The movie is filled with unremarkable men who would rather die than appear weak."
STOP-LOSS. Alonso Duralde, MSNBC.com: "Even if you think the U.S. presence in Iraq is justified, Kimberly Peirce's Stop-Loss provides a poignant and shattering portrait of what our soldiers have to endure in combat, at home, and from an army that sends its men and women back into battle over and over again." Sean Burns, Philadelphia Weekly: "Comprised of bitter, beautifully observed truths butting up uncomfortably against loads of hoary Hollywood hooey, writer/director Kimberly Peirce's extremely well-meaning Stop-Loss attempts to battle the trend of audience indifference toward Iraq War dramas. But the movie's real war is with itself." A.O. Scott, New York Times: "The sober, mournful piety that has characterized a lot of the other fictional features about Iraq—documentaries are another matter—is almost entirely missing from Stop-Loss, which is being distributed by Paramount's youth-friendly label MTV Films. Not that the movie is unsentimental—far from it—but its messy, chaotic welter of feeling has a tang of authenticity. Instead of high-minded indignation or sorrow, it runs on earthier fuel: sweat, blood, beer, testosterone, loud music and an ideologically indeterminate, freewheeling sense of rage." Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: "This is a wrenching story of men at arms who cannot find peace outside the military circle, who return to civilian life on the horrific edge of violence and despair. In this Stop-Loss has a certain amount in common with Boys Don't Cry. Peirce again concerns herself with men and violence as well as with individuals conflicted over gender roles trying to work out what society demands of them." Stephanie Zacharek, Salon: "Peirce makes her points, all right. She just doesn't trust us to get them."
21. Alonso Duralde, MSNBC.com: "One would expect a movie about high-stakes gambling in Las Vegas and young, attractive savants using their smarts to break the bank at blackjack to be sexy and thrilling. Unfortunately, 21 winds up being about as exciting as freshman calculus." Manohla Dargis, New York Times: "Greed is good and comes without a hint of conscience in 21, a feature-length bore about some smarty-pants who take Vegas for a ride." Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: "21 isn't pretentious, exactly, but it's damn close, and in trying to whip up a melodramatic morality tale the film becomes an increasingly flabby slog." Robert Wilonsky, LA Weekly: "The big-screen version of Ben Mezrich's book ain't no gamble at all—it's about as risky as playing the nickel slots with 10 cents in your pocket. It's as though director Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde, Monster-in-Law) and writers Peter Steinfeld (Be Cool, as if) and Allan Loeb adapted the book-jacket blurb rather than crack the spine."
THE BANK JOB. Jim Emerson, Chicago Sun-Times: "A serviceable B-grade British heist movie, "The Bank Job" is no worse than its generic title. And no better." Robert Wilonsky, Dallas Observer: "Statham—reduced to muttering guttural groans in various bombs that close on opening weekend (In the Name of the King, War) or get released directly to DVD (Chaos) or spawn inexplicable franchises (Transporter, Crank)—at last proves himself a leading man who does more than lead with his head. It isn't till the film's end that he has to throw a few punches and land a few head-butts—contractually obligated, no doubt. But by then he's managed to negotiate a screenplay in which there are complete sentences—whole paragraphs, even—that he gives his all without breaking a sweat; even when he has to convince his missus he's a stand-up shitheel, Statham's totally believable. He might yet become Bruce Willis."
BE KIND REWIND. Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: "Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind is whimsy with a capital W. No, it's WHIMSY in all caps. Make that all-caps italic boldface. Oh, never mind. I'm getting too whimsical. Maybe Gondry does, too. You'll have to decide for yourself. This is a movie that takes place in no possible world, which may be a shame, if not for the movie, then for possible worlds." Elbert Ventura, ReverseShot: "Be Kind Rewind contains reminders of the limits of this brilliant artist. That the movie still enthralls is a testament to the fact that Gondry's starting point—an aesthetic in which each frame bears its maker's sensibility—is miles ahead of where most filmmakers aspire to be."
CHICAGO 10. J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader: "Chicago 10, an electrifying new "mash-up documentary" by Brett Morgen, vividly reconstructs the battles on the street and in the courtroom, and it couldn't come at a more opportune moment." Jim Emerson, Chicago Sun-Times: "Through the kaleidoscopic prism of Brett Morgen's uproarious Chicago 10, a zippy mixture of documentary footage and motion-capture animation, we see how the confrontations between police and protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention played out as political theater."
CLOVERFIELD. Oily Richards, Empire: "Wise to the fact that the most frightening attack is the one without apparent reason, Cloverfield never chooses to explain its monster's arrival. It's suddenly there and, as one soldier notes, 'it's winning'. It intends to scare, not educate. The constant air of panic is so pervasive that it's easy to miss the skilful creation of the sequences, which include a rescue from a collapsing skyscraper and a tunnel sequence so butt-clenching you'll crap diamonds for a week." Keith Phipps, Onion A/V Club: "It's absolutely terrifying, and it's all the more effective for the way it lets viewers spend time getting to know the terrified stars, and the emotions and regrets behind their seemingly futile efforts to survive. It puts human faces on the victims of mass destruction, faces that might easily have been yours or mine, staring down the maw of something we don't understand." J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader: "[Producer J.J.] Abrams may be exploiting images of a national trauma, but politicians have been doing the same thing for years in pursuit of even less noble ends: the $10 you'll spend on Cloverfield hardly compares with the estimated $487 billion spent to date on the war in Iraq." Richard Corliss, Time: "A horror/sf/disaster movie loses points every time you're forced to ask yourself, 'Why are they doing something so stupid?', and the answer is, 'Because they're in a horror/sf/disaster movie.' And if you thought that Abrams—the creator of Felicity, Alias and Lost, and the writer-director of the spiffy if underperforming Mission: Impossible III—would produce a horror movie that was not just high-concept but high-IQ—you misjudge his faithfulness to a genre requiring that, in extremis, people act in a manner that's way below their intelligence levels." Stephanie Zacharek, Salon: "Is Cloverfield trying to be a 'fun' monster movie, or is it trying to say something about the way, post-9/11, we experience horrific events? I simply have no idea."
THE COUNTERFEITERS. Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: " For the prisoners in Blocks 18 and 19 of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, meals were served, beds provided, light opera floated from the speakers. There was even a ping-pong table to play on. But as writer-director Stefan Ruzowitzky shows, powerfully, affectingly, in The Counterfeiters, the privileges experienced by this small team of Jews and criminals came at a price." David Denby, The New Yorker: "The Counterfeiters is a testament to guile." Adam Bernstein, Washington Post: "Based on a real-life Nazi operation, the film is a tense drama with performances that elevate the movie to the front rank of films set in concentration camps, from Gillo Pontecorvo's magnificent 1959 drama Kapo to Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List of 1993."
DIARY OF THE DEAD. Jim Emerson, The Chicago Sun-Times: "When young filmmakers gather to shoot cinema-verite video documentaries, watch out: Something really bad is going to happen. In The Blair Witch Project, it was...well, we don't really know what it was, but it sure freaked out Heather. In Cloverfield, it was something large with an antipathy toward Manhattan landmarks. And in George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead, as you have probably gathered by now, it is the meat-eating undead. These movies give the shaky-cam a reason to get shaky—but the kids try not to miss a shot." David Edelstein, New York: "Compared with other first-person motion-sickness horror pictures like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead is weak tea, yet there's enough social commentary (and innovative splatter) to acidulate the brew—to remind you that Romero, even behind the curve, makes other genre filmmakers look like fraidy-cats." J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader: "Diary of the Dead proceeds as if the events of the first four movies never happened, starting over in the present with a handful of film students whose no-budget shoot for a mummy thriller is interrupted by an outbreak of zombie violence. The premise allows Romero a second childhood of sorts, a chance to revisit the independent spirit of his first big hit even as he reflects on how much America has changed in the past 40 years."
DOOMSDAY. Gideon Levy, UnderGroundOnline: "The most fun thing about Doomsday was watching a generic action flick run the gamut from near-future militarism to post-apoc tribal punkland to the Dark Ages without any boring plot twists to slow down the shoot & slash & run & kill. When they get to the souped-up sports car that appears out of nowhere, you're ready for the chase scene & big boom at the end. If only the action scenes - the only backbone holding together this otherwise paper-thin film - weren't so lazily and poorly edited, I could've really enjoyed this film that made no pretenses to being more than it was." Matt Zoller Seitz, The New York Times: "Doomsday has an appealing punk-rock sneer, but aside from a few clever music cues—including a Fine Young Cannibals song that accompanies a deranged bacchanal given by fine young cannibals—swagger is, unfortunately, its only notable quality." Gina Piccalo, San Francisco Chronicle: "There is no slow build in Doomsday. Geysers of blood, severed limbs and pustule-ravaged faces blanket the opening frames. Then Rhona Mitra's machete-wielding babe with the removable, bionic eyeball shows up to wreak her own pickax-to-the-face brand of havoc, decapitating her way through tribes of Thunderdome-ready cannibals. That's when things really get moving."
DRILLBIT TAYLOR. Keith Uhlich, UnderGroundOnline: "There are worse things, I suppose, than being below-waistline roundhoused by a Hollywood celebrity. Chief among such tortures would be experiencing the complete sense of desperation that marks Drillbit Taylor's each and every scene ." A.O. Scott, New York Times: "'You get what you pay for,' the tag line on the advertisement says. I saw it free, and I still feel cheated." Raphaela Weissman, New York Press: "Its comedy falls flat, and the film has a violent core where its heart should be." Xan Brooks, The Guardian: "The final bell can't come soon enough."
FROWNLAND. Matt Zoller Seitz, The House Next Door: "It's a horror film about everyday life in which characters who fail to recognize their own freakish aspects behave monstrously toward others: Marty by way of Eraserhead." Daniel Cockburn, ReverseShot: "Its 100%-celluloid material and Method-ish performances may be just more convention, but all these conventions counterbalance to create something new."
FUNNY GAMES. Fernando F. Croce, The House Next Door: "Michael Haneke is a clever guy. I promised myself I'd never revisit his 1997 film Funny Games, yet he's tricked me into doing just that by remaking it, shot by agonizing shot...The plot is still The Desperate Hours rewritten by the Marquis De Sade." David Edelstein, New York: "Naomi Watts produced this remake, apparently concluding that she hadn't yet been sufficiently violated onscreen. King Kong, after all, turned out to be a softy—now she's in the hairy paw of a giant ape artiste."
THE HAMMER. Matt Zoller Seitz, New York Times: "The synopsis of The Hammer makes it sound like a long-lost Billy Crystal movie: a smart-alecky, self-destructive Los Angeles handyman named Jerry Ferro (Adam Carolla) loses his job and his girlfriend, then reconnects with his past as a Golden Gloves boxer and tries to qualify for the United States Olympic team at 40. Mr. Carolla, an amateur boxer and cable television veteran, has a tendency to riff when he should be acting, and the whole project—written by Kevin Hench and directed by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld (Kissing Jessica Stein)—is rambling and disorganized. At the same time, though, The Hammer also has dry wit and unforced working-class swagger, and hits some surprising emotional notes."
HORTON HEARS A WHO! A.O. Scott, New York Times: "What distinguishes Horton Hears a Who! from the other recent Dr. Seuss film adaptations—How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Cat in the Hat, in case you need reminding—is that it is not one of the worst movies ever made." Dennis Cozzalio, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule: "An inspired CGI comedy that honors the spirit of the good doctor's story even as it expands upon it thematically." Matt Zoller Seitz, The House Next Door: "The ratio of innocent enthusiasm to commercial cartoon formula is higher than I expected. Co-directors Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino, scriptwriters Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio and the animators from Blue Sky (the Ice Age studio) have managed to adapt Seuss without turning him out, which I guess counts as progress."
IN BRUGES. Bilge Ebiri, Nerve: " Way more engaging than a bantering-hitman-with-a-heart picture released in 2008 has any right to be, Martin McDonagh's In Bruges might have made serious waves back in 1994. Today it feels like a mysterious creature from another age—devoid of grit or naturalism, and shot with a composed elegance largely missing from today's screens. In other words, it's a fairy tale with guns and exploding heads. That's its blessing and its curse." Lauren Wissot, The House Next Door: "Often it feels that McDonagh's script is as adrift as one of the boats on the shimmering canals. The pace is too slow, at times lagging behind the adrenalin-packed story, the film relying heavily on Carter Burwell's theatrical score. But perhaps the most disturbing thing about In Bruges is its predictable ending."
IRINA PALM: A.O. Scott, New York Times. "Irina Palm may be the work of a German-born Belgian director, but it belongs to a sturdy and very British genre: the naughty-granny comedy, in which an older woman is liberated and rejuvenated by an excursion into vice." Jim Ridley, LA Weekly: "Nobody can reduce tawdry material to doddering quaintness like the British, but this staggeringly inane joint effort of U.K., Belgian, French, German and Luxembourgian film financing represents a true coalition of the witless."
JAR CITY. A.O. Scott, New York Times: "The picture of Iceland that emerges in Baltasar Kormákur's Jar City is vivid and powerful but not something the country's tourist board would be likely to endorse. The landscape has its austere poetry to be sure—mountains framing the apartment blocks of Reykjavik, spits of volcanic rock jutting into a churning sea—but a fog of damp unhappiness seems to pervade every face and conversation. And yet by the end of this film, based on a popular mystery novel by Arnaldur Indridason, it is hard not to feel a certain affection for the place." Lauren Wissot, The House Next Door: "This is not just a fictional story about a couple who lose their four-year-old girl to a brain tumor, nor just a tale about the search for a murderer and his motive, but an intriguing blend of the two, overlaid by a Big Brother that takes the form of the nonfiction, controversial deCODE Genetics Inc., a company specializing in genetic research that, several years ago, received access to all medical files in the Icelandic government's database. Invasion of privacy or scientific necessity? As a government stand-in character argues near the beginning of the film, information isn't 'personal' since it's been passed on for generations. Rather, it belongs to society. But does society have a right to know about every disease, even those that can't be cured?"
JUNO. Fernando F. Croce, Slant: "Lke the titular character's accidental pregnancy, Juno has a fumbling start and an affecting delivery." Elbert Ventura, ReverseShot: "Juno is occasionally funny, rarely intelligent, and often annoying. A crowd-pleaser for people who like to think they're above crowd-pleasers but are actually not." Stephanie Zacharek, Salon: "Juno doesn't make judgments or pronouncements. Its great beauty lies in how generous it is toward all its characters." Richard Schickel, Time: "Juno is not a great movie; it does not have aspirations in that direction. But it is, in its little way, a truthful, engaging and welcome entertainment." Marcy Dermansky, About.com: "Though too precocious and polished, Juno manages to charm, with many lovely moments. In the tradition of maladjusted teen comedies, however, Juno doesn't rank among the recent greats." Lauren Wissot, The House Next Door: "Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody has described herself as a 'naked Margaret Mead,' a cultural anthropologist who for years studied the rites and rituals of the stripper tribe in lieu of the nine-to-five grind. It's a great line and a quite telling one, for this writer's scientific approach to life is precisely why
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