Latest Movie Reviews
LATEST CRITICS REVIEWS
Displaying critic's reviews, page 1 of 3
- Where the Wild Things Are PG (Contains mild threat and brief violence)
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Rating: 2/5
Where the Wild Things Are, director Spike Jonze's (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) ambitious adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic children's book, has been referred to variously as "experimental" and "art-house" — and only occasionally in a derisive manner — by numerous movie critics and journalists. For all of their negative box-office implications, the labels do come with certain benefits, the most important of which is a little-known loophole in the filmmaking code that renders certain films largely exempt from standard rules of story structure to which more orthodox films are expected to adhere.
- The Limits of Control NR (for graphic nudity and some language)
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Rating: 0.5/5
WHAT IT'S ABOUT?
- Planet 51 U (for mild sci-fi action and some suggestive humor)
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Rating: 1/5
I hope that if alien cultures are monitoring our entertainment, they take a pass on the film Planet 51. It may reverse the human/alien traditional roles by having the human astronaut be the fish out of water on an alien planet, but xenophobia stopped being a funny or useful plot device by the mid-'80s. Any mildly cognizant alien intelligences would take one look at this movie and decide to check back on the human race in another hundred years.
- The Box 12A (Contains moderate horror and psychological threat)
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Rating: 0.5/5
Enigmatic indie director Richard Kelly is nothing if not ambitious. His debut feature, the cult favorite Donnie Darko, tackled both suburban ennui and quantum physics. His follow-up, Southland Tales, combined elaborate dance numbers and juvenile comedy with apocalyptic Bible quotes and Patriot Act criticism. Kelly's latest effort, the sci-fi thriller The Box, turns a forgotten Twilight Zone story into a sprawling existential discourse on humanity's predilection for greed and solipsism.
- The Girlfriend Experience 12A (Contains strong language and sex references)
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Rating: 3.5/5
WHAT IT'S ABOUT?
- Departures (Okuribito) 12A (Contains emotionally intense scenes of bereavement)
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Rating: 3.5/5
WHAT IT'S ABOUT?
- Law Abiding Citizen 18 (Contains strong bloody violence, torture and sexual violence)
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Rating: 3/5
Charles Bronson may have passed away, but the spirit of his Death Wish films lives on -- albeit in an absurdly twisted fashion -- in F. Gary Gray's (The Italian Job, Be Cool) gleefully over-the-top revenge thriller Law Abiding Citizen.
- The Blind Side (for one scene involving brief violence, drug and sexual references)
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Rating: 2/5
When one sees the trailer for this Sandra Bullock film, it's hard not to feel a bit cynical: Rich white woman adopts poor black kid out of the ghetto and teaches him self-confidence and how to take full advantage of having a good education, thus saving him from what seemingly would've been a short and wasted life. Indeed, it rings a bit offensive from the outside; however, execution is everything, and there's certainly more going on here that's worthwhile than first glimpses would indicate -- albeit for a rather specific audience.
- The Twilight Saga: New Moon 12A (Contains moderate fantasy violence and horror)
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Rating: 2/5
A year after Twilight scorched the cineplex with its tale of forbidden teenage human/vampire love, the second chapter of author Stephenie Meyer's harlequin saga has arrived to once again stir the loins of enraptured tweens (and their mothers, and their mothers' mothers) everywhere. Having already sold out its first 2,000 showings several days before its release, The Twilight Saga: New Moon is arguably the most critic-proof movie of the decade. And yet, here goes ...
- The Informant 15 (Contains strong language)
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Rating: 3.5/5
WHAT'S IT ABOUT?