The film’s pervasive flashbacks to childhood abuse and misbehavior come to feel manipulative and unnecessary.
Emilio Aragón’s film is a star vehicle in the strictest sense.
It functions under the delusion that subtext will magically appear if you linger on a character long enough, and the significance of most of its scenes is nothing if not inscrutable.
James Franco’s readiness in approaching famously abstract source material certainly doesn’t translate well into his directorial formalism, or, more appropriately, lack of formalism.
Franco’s aesthetic is ugly and ambling, not so much because of its brownish-gray monochrome, but because it registers like the jerky result of a college kid wielding a DV cam.
Alan Ball should leave the handwringing to the kids in Twilight.
Over the years, Alan Ball’s ideological commitment to never kicking any supernatural being out of bed has led to some narrative problems.
The only thing sharper and sexier than the fangs on True Blood is the writing.
An outstanding visual and auditory experience on Blu-ray easily makes up for the show’s shortcomings.
The further Alan Ball steps away from the vamps, the closer he gets to the beating heart of the human.
Annapolis is an extended “Be All That You Can Be” advertisement for the character-building benefits of military service.