THE KINGDOM wants to be SYRIANA by way of BLACK HAWK DOWN, but by earnestly following those templates, it renders itself an unsatisfying pastiche that has neither conviction nor surprise, much less the pervasive sense of uncertainty for which it so desperately strives. Instead, it comes across as schmaltzy, predictable, and insidiously imperialistic. It’s the… Read More »
THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. — THE COMPLETE SERIES
With the success of the Bond films, it was just a matter of time before television tried to cash in on the spy craze, and as we learn in one of the many featurettes that distinguishes the DVD release of the THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., THE COMPLETE SERIES, Ian Fleming was involved in both. It… Read More »
RENDITION
RENDITION takes a subject worth a stark examination and turns it into a long, rambling, and unexpectedly dull tale unredeemed by its good intentions, its twist at the end or Meryl Streep as the prissy and persnickety CIA rendition-meister. It takes a great deal of effort to make that combination fail and this earnest effort… Read More »
HITMAN
Sometimes all it takes is one great image. From there the fertile imaginings of a visionary filmmaker can build a story that is a compelling, even wondrous, cinematic experience. Alas, that is not the case with HITMAN. The image is of a striking bald guy (Timothy Olyphant) in a well-tailored black suit striding about with… Read More »
REVOLVER
Caution! Guy Ritchie has entered his Bergman phase. Ingmar Bergman. Having stylishly plumbed the depths of the action genre with his dazzling visual style and staccato pacing as crisp as the wrong end of a machine gun, he has decided to attempt something more. And for this he should be lauded. Alas, with REVOLVER he… Read More »
ATONEMENT
ATONEMENT is as close to perfection as mere mortals can aspire to. This translation to the screen of the Booker Prize-winning novel by Ian McEwan flawlessly captures the complex and powerful play of emotions that propel the story while annotating it with a visual component that amplifies rather than distracts. The plot hinges on what… Read More »
NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS
NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS is a cutesy and inane follow-up to the only slightly less cutesy and inane NATIONAL TREASURE. The plot feels like it was cobbled together from the sort of random ideas tossed out during the wee hours of the morning during an all-night brainstorming session, ideas that seem like genius when… Read More »
RAMBO
The key to why the film RAMBO exists may well boil down to something a mercenary says to the title character. I’m only here because of my ex-wife and three kids. Which is to say we all have bills to pay and responsibilities to meet and why should Sylvester Stallone be any different? The mercenary,… Read More »
VANTAGE POINT
VANTAGE POINT takes a storyline that is a middling throwback to the Cold War paranoid fantasies of a half-century ago and tries to jazz it up with a multi-view narrative. The device makes the most of doing the requisite slow reveal of exactly what happened before, during, and after a terrorist attack in Spain, but… Read More »
BEE MOVIE — DVD
BEE MOVIE is a perfectly sweet little film that suffered from audience expectations. Fans of Jerry Seinfeld were, perhaps, expecting the same sensibility in this, his first post-television film project, as they had enjoyed on the series. It wasn’t an unreasonable expectation, Seinfeld and series writers Spike Feresten and Andy Robin were among the films… Read More »