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Marty Meltz - EzineArticles.com Expert Author   RSS

36-year published film reviewer, 30 of those just ended (budget cuts) with the award-winning Portland (Maine) Press Herald and the statewide Maine Sunday Telegram.

[View Marty Meltz's Extended Author Bio]

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  • "The Blind Side" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] A just-plain well-made sports movie with superb audience appeal, charming personalities, a sprightly demeanor and totally entertaining. "The Blind Side" is Sandra Bullock's best performance ever. Her sassy and brassy character's dynamics depend entirely on insightful, professional interpretation and she proves consummately skilled at every line, every nuance and a consistently on-target southern accent.


  • "2012" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] I d'no. Is there really any room to criticize a movie when it's so much illuminating fun? Take the words Gargantuan Colossus, upgrade them into outer orbit beyond the capabilities of mere words, and you've got "2012." But it's so big, SO big, that its attempts to introduce the human element fall well into the realm of pitiful. The spectacle is so humongous, so plausible, that in itself it is terrifying. Then come the attempts at human relationships and how they deal with the impending catastrophe, and that effort is pure silliness. At times embarrassingly so. Director Roland Emmerich, who did "Independence Day" and "The Day After Tomorrow," now raises the ante, daring all other filmmakers in the known universe to ever approach this new level of motion picture cataclysmic fury.


  • "Pirate Radio" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] What to expect? Nostalgia, that's what. Hey, having been a part of the '60s, I can love it. But only for the music memories, nothing else. What we've got here in "Pirate Radio" (originally "The Boat That Rocked" in its openings abroad) is mindless, disorganized comic rambling amid colorful characters, well-performed, but with a hopelessly lame plot. God, the memories are sure there. But that's all. Loaded with solid Brit performers and one terrific Yank, flowing with major energy on a course to nowhere, the film just hands all responsibility for audience communication to its great pop songs of the day. It sports an effervescent, boundlessly charming impudence with in-your-face jokes, avoiding even a mild attempt at a dicey relationship. It's good beatin' feet for those who were 60s teenagers, with a fair share of potty humor. The film also has a burdensome amount of screen time, overestimating its primary value as a partyin' movie. There is no consistent tone. It is aimless except as a portrayal of youth turning against a pretentious, pompous world of adults by integrating a new form of music that not only defined, but was their very being.


  • "The Men Who Stare at Goats" Film Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Ok, yeah,... I can see the creative poker-faced comedy it's shooting for, but it most definitely does not have the plot energy or momentum to sustain itself. It's a bore. "The Men Who Stare at Goats" is all George Clooney, who does a marvelous comedic effort with a film that courts yawns all over the place.


  • "The Fourth Kind" Film Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Beats me why "The Fourth Kind" is getting knocked critically. It's downright OK for what it tries to be and only the super-cynical will let their disbeliefs interfere with artistic criticism.


  • "A Serious Man' Film Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] The Coen Brothers' major mistake, in terms of audience communication, was in failing to use those quotes as captions at beginning and end. Their film, "A Serious Man" was inspired by Job.


  • "Amelia" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] A fine and continuously entertaining, if not inspirational, life story, depicted with superb and measured visual design. "Amelia," about the incomparably courageous "lady of the air" Amelia Earhart (July 24, 1897 - missing July 2, 1937) is a film which, from a historical biography viewpoint, is illuminating enough, but from an involving director's grip on the most absorbing methods of film audience engagement, it's outstanding.


  • "Law Abiding Citizen" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Bizarre in its action, audacious in its kill devices, powerfully dramatic in its visual design, begrudgingly effective. "Law Abiding Citizen," proceeding with the full confidence of decades of Hollywood's most lurid spectacles of gory violence as its base, strides forward on seven-league boots, supported by a cleverly conceived basic story concept and spectacular, if only barely credible, action events.


  • "The Invention of Lying" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Lotsa laughs for about 25 minutes, then just good, then fair comedy. Good substance, however, intriguing theme and glittering performances. Offering a world in which the ability to tell a lie has never evolved, not even a little white-lie fib, "The Invention of Lying" can be enormously funny but, without writer & co-director Ricky Gervais noticing that it's not enough to sustain an entire film, it falters about mid-way along. Still, I got more than enough laughs and went away happy.


  • "Pandorum" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Cleverly conceived in its plot, "Pandorum" is nonetheless sensually overbearing in its treatment. The outer space probe theme is delivered with endlessly tumultuous metallic noise pervading at ultra-high decibels, clanking and crashing to distraction. The atmosphere is endlessly dark, hardcore intense, with lethal confrontation the word. The high level anger and raging hostility churns the climate of violence. Characters yell, growl, groan and shriek at each other, not always in an enlightening manner. While the story does justify itself over the long haul, this does not alleviate its relentless pounding from possibly sending you out of the theater for some relief.


  • "Informant!" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Two considerations: A) How ready are you to accept a smartly performed movie that's kind of boring for about an hour? B) How much can you care about corporate executive crimes against each other?


  • "In the Loop" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Major British comedy, but for the connoisseur only. And be aware, dialogue may be missed at times under heavy British inflections. This is humor at a very high level of sophistication for the acutely aware political satire filmgoer, designed for those who seek the most subtle of ironies in high-level government caprice and indifference. Seekers after obvious jokes, quips and in-your-face comedy need not attend. The absurdities and clumsy stumblings of modern Western world governments in matters of war, with particular emphasis on those of Great Britain and the U.S., is what the comedy "In the Loop" is all about.


  • "Taking Woodstock" Film Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] A devastatingly difficult challenge and a reasonable success. As an interpretation of the greatest, most defining event of the "The Soaring Sixties."


  • "Inglourious Basterds" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] He's finally come of age, his "Inglourious Basterds" being a matured grasp of some of the most dramatic of modern devices, strategies and tactics of the cinematic arts. Its European feel in some parts, blessed with a full Hollywood budget and greatly sophisticated Tarantino technique and style expand rapidly and organically, indeed inexorably, into a treatment of spellbinding suspense at many levels. His choice of allowing each character to speak in his and her own language, thus preserving the special emphases and cultural feel, was superb.


  • "District 9" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Grisly in the extreme, strikingly original, perversely intelligent. Steeped in male energy, peppered with surprise turns on old themes, the visually cruel "District 9," probably nauseating for some, spiritually desolate for others, but of macabre fascination for still others, is destined to re-shape the sci-fi concepts of modern film. Rising briskly out of the initial monotony of its descriptive array of desolation, the film treats its morbid substance with such weighty detail and relentless illumination that you are struck with how real this high concept becomes.


  • "Julie & Julia" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] One of the chick-flickiest of chick flicks, with superb intelligence and refreshing respect for its audience's intelligence. Expect to be surprised that you could ever, after the very, very dramatically soft opening sequences, get caught up in this. Effortlessly and unassumingly, leisurely rather than reaching for flash and witty dialogue, "Julie & Julia" disarmingly eases its way into your interest, then into your beguilement.


  • "The Hurt Locker" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment] A superior war film, and the very best of the Iraq-themed, "The Hurt Locker" radiates breathtaking suspense in countless quality moments. With surprise bombs as its center focus and and the anatomy of anger pervading everywhere, the film awaits only the details of the basic mission to elevate it to special status among insightful war movies. Its illuminating aspect, that of filling an enormous void that all of us but Iraq War vets have as to the blood-curdling essence of moving among roadside bombs and suicide-wired bombers, is emotionally scorching.


  • "Funny People" - Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Humor] A very good movie, ruefully admitted. Best appreciated as a view of a little known but entirely unattractive sub-culture called the L.A. stand-up comedy scene, "Funny People" covers its ground vigorously.


  • "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] No surprise. "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" needs one rating for the ardent Harry Potter student and follower and an entirely separate one for the casual filmgoer who just wants to see an entertaining movie. For the former, it's a magnificently detailed and textured, faithful film interpretation from the J.K. Rowling books. For the latter, it's over-indulgence in the above at the expense of a need for a compelling narrative.


  • "The Proposal" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Yes, it's old, old material but as always, it ain't the joke, it's the way it's delivered. "The Proposal" is solid entertainment, well-romanced by reasonable but not sizzling chemistry between Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. I can't, however, really give it a "good" rating because it's fairly devoid of any romance-comedy imagination and a bit loaded with shaky contrivances.


  • "The Taking of Pelham 123" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Yeah, right -- loud, bombarding your senses, brute force entertainment -- but it works. You're used to this by now, right? Brash, breathtaking action suspense with spectacular dynamics in every department, making the national critics call it trash, but god, can you ever love it? You came and paid your good money to be entertained intelligently, and wow, you got it! "The Taking of Pelham 123" is astute, concentrated stuff by actionmeister director Tony Scott which steamrolls objections by the application of professional competence, updating an older film and lining it with modern thrills.


  • "Up" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] A masterpiece of adult-level art and craft of animated films, not to say a wonderfully refreshing plot quality exploring seriously the trials and tribulations of our lives. The points of praise for this film cannot be overdone. It's a landmark.


  • Star Trek Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] I'll flat out call the prequel "Star Trek" the most stupendous, breathtaking sci-fi spectacle ever. Some nit-picking is in order, to be sure, but everybody of all ages -- go for it! Yep, they're all there and they're all believable! And everything the beloved characters say and do in their younger years seems right and the spectacle has been ratcheted up to the current state of the art and a good deal beyond. Most impressive is the terrific attention shown to the scripting and directing levels to expanding on every sci-fi concept. This is a film that wants to be, and succeeds in being, enormous in scale in all astronomical vision.


  • "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] A silly implementation of a workable premise is saved by loads of terrific, snappy one-liners in "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past." Matthew McConaughey, aided by a hip and catchy Michael Douglas, manages to deliver a performance so immersed in funny lines that you can stay with the film just anticipating what he's going to say next. The concept of a promiscuously womanizing Vanity Fair photographer, whose only dedication is dumping women after he's convinced them that love is on the way, is in itself ultimately fertile in bringing up many issues of the deeper meanings of a married life versus lifetime bachelorhood.


  • "X-Men Origins Wolverine" - Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] An intellectually dead movie, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" survives, perhaps unsurprisingly, entirely on its action thrills, all of which are satisfactory even for the connoisseur. Quite uninvolving emotionally, the revenge motive now having long-ago played out its impact in modern film, the whole scenario, like many retro-fittings of thrillers of the past 35 years or so, will spellbind only the video game set who demand little beyond eye candy.


  • "Obsessed" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] "Obsessed" is unusually usual. For a spell, you'll be a wee bit annoyed. But darn, its eventual suspense, long awaited, is surprising. The theme is old enough. Hell hath no fury like a temptress frustrated. It was exploited to DVDs. The current film works it over more simply using an almost old-fashioned style -- no hard-nosed camera movements, no slo-mo, no compulsive close-ups. OK, no complaint there, but then what is its hook? No, Mr. director Steve Shill, you're not going to satisfy us with leading music that overwhelms the routine action. I assure you, we do notice that.


  • "The Soloist" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Commendable ambition but largely unrealized as entertainment. "The Soloist," a highly emotional drama, is an Oscar-bound performance showing for Jamie Foxx which goes begging for compelling events to maintain its forward movement.


  • All the Critics Agree!
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Never happened. Never. Yet with some new film releases, that's an oft-seen proclamation. True in some film publicity department's dreams, maybe. But in no way is it in the range of the real.


  • "17 Again" Film Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Quite a collection of cliches. Misfit teens, misfit dads, boys with no understandings of girls. The plot? Recycled but hardly retrofitted. So if you're close to middle-age and you could return yourself to your teen years to start adult life all over again, how would it be? Hey, the theme's OK, if a bit facile in the way that happens, but umm . . . shouldn't a screenwriter and director be a bit inventive about that?


  • "State of Play" Film Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] The theme is the desperation of greed and power. The method is to crush them together into a critical mass on screen. Well done, dynamically entertaining. Ruthless and merciless Washington politics in a presidential race is the focus element in this thriller. Up front is the great arena of infighting in which power has a life of its own and seekers after it never get a chance to make the same mistake once. The riveting drive in the handsomely mounted "State of Play," with its uniformly powerful cast, stems from the quality in the energy charisma of almost every scene.


  • "Observe and Report" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] What in the world is "Observe and Report" trying to be? Erratic in its comic timing, awkwardly serious and mean in its drama, totally unconvincing in its basic premise, wildly improbable in its lead character, starkly unappealing in the man's obnoxious personality, stumbling and bumbling in its plot progress; this is, well, incomprehensible. Comic scenes never get a chance to develop into a joke, the gaps between moments of failed gags being filled in by f-words...


  • "Adventureland" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] What? What? A film about early-20 youth that does not make the boys look and sound like air-headed balls of libidinous ego preoccupied with fashioning obscenities into a monument to the generation? And guys actually have, wha'dya-call'em, "feelings? This, my friends, is a daring movie. Oh, this is rare. And what a breath of fresh air. Greg Mottola, the director who made the admirably funny and decent quality "Superbad," now gives us the continuously amusing romance comedy "Adventureland" in which things happen because, in the ingenious way in which the situations unfold, they have to happen. They just grow naturally out of a virtual garden of fertile small conflicts.


  • "Monsters Vs Aliens" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Dazzling action for the kids, easy plot to follow, appealing monsters. Frankly, though, except for the sexy 50-foot tall heroine of Barbie-like proportions and the longest legs in the known universe, nothing really much for adults. The film's action motif is high-ratcheted stuff, with every motive apparently directed to very short attention spans. The scale is kept grand, the goals simple. The general concept imagination level is not impressive. Dialogue is primarily for the tots, with just a few gratuitous references at adult level. One gets the distinct sense that at the scripting level, nobody really tried very hard at this.


  • "Duplicity" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Smart. Very smart. Indeed, it is so sophisticated, loaded with mazes of mazes of plot turns and dazzling wit that, y' know, you may not even like it. I'll observe that if you truly comprehend and follow every scene, you're at major league level rocket scientist level. It is best, you realize after a bit, if you just let it all flow as long as you understand what the key characters' basic motivations are. "Who was that?" and "What's s/he mean by that?" are just too complex to deal with continuously. To make matters even more challenging, time periods are mixed freely, although captions do advise you as to when you are where you are. Roberts and Owen are absolutely electric together, drawing, repelling equal and opposite energies, radiating a crackling romance undertone. Their dialogue is so peppery and provocative that you're just handling one retort when two more overwhelm you. At the same time, the sizzling dynamic of corporate greed chillingly overruns the schemes.


  • "Knowing" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Just don't bother to analyze it or let your cynical sense get in your way and this is a darn good sci-fi film. Just when you thought you'd seen the most dazzling apocalyptic special effects of all, here goes Hollywood ratcheting them up again. But the film very efficiently and competently picks up on its quirky hook about a large set of cosmically derived numbers which forecast disasters and goes on to build some solid suspense all the way up to its supercharged ending. For an experience that turns out to be an almost spiritually grandiose concept of how and where we're headed in a uniquely splendiferous, gargantuan final scenario that'll leave you in a shock spellbound state, I will very much recommend this.


  • Race to Witch Mountain
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Good family fun with almost non-stop action. And most of the time it actually works at many levels. Brazenly starring a 12-year-old boy and girl as space aliens in order to help market the film, "Race to Witch Mountain" has enough time-tested Walt Disney technique and basic content to make it a very manageable family sci-fi flick. Saturated with big-scale EFX and demolition derbies, much of it is almost monotonously repetitive in tone. There is fantasy, magic, telekinesis, molecular manipulation and all the usual inconsistencies of supernatural power manipulation.


  • The Last House on the Left
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] "The Last House on the Left" is a recollection of horrormeister Wes Craven and Sean Cunningham's 1972 film that launched a grisly genre of fright flicks for the next generation. The Craven film was an ugly theme of kidnapping and sadistic rape which subsequently set off filmmakers' imaginations, giving birth to slashing and bodily mutilation galore in near-future movies.


  • "Watchmen" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Grandly eloquent, gruesomely grisly and breathtakingly spectacular in what it wants to say, but clumsy and amateurish in its wrap-up. The much anticipated "Watchmen" deserves a lot more artistic accolade than the knee-jerk criticisms are allowing it. It is, quite frankly, the most wildly ambitious comic book expression on the big screen ever, superior to "Dark Knight," "Sin City" and other attempts. Measured in terms of sheer creative input and explosive output, it absolutely had me hypnotized by its total audio-visual force all the way up to an ending that you can easily see is sputtering badly, headed for an unstoppable letdown in intelligence and imagination.


  • "Confessions of a Shopaholic" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Hey, I kinda liked this. One of the chickiest chick flicks I've ever seen, I'll not go with the critical community which is generally calling it air-headed and valueless. Uh-uh. What I liked about "Confessions of a Shopaholic" is, first of all, the overwhelmingly, effervescent and infectiously sparkly. Isla Fisher who does a full-capacity performance in an ambitious film that roams and romps over the high-end Manhattan magazine publication and journalism world in substance and style that keeps you on-edge, off-edge and almost always smiling.


  • "The International" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Y'know, in a movie, you can have stakes set so high that they're insurmountable. This sort of thing deprives it of suspense. But if Clive Owen is your hero, it can work modestly. So how about a bloody -- really bloody (you know, like when they gush blood long after they're dead) -- world class shoot-out in Manhattan's Guggenheim Museum in which a dozen or so shooters are all armed with the Israeli Uzi (the sequence was entirely staged on a massive, re-creation in an old railway roundhouse in Berlin). Sure, that's just fine, but what's the plot here?


  • "Coraline" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Animation visual imagination of the first magnitude! Terrific. And, one with an irresponsible rating as PG. Watch out, parents. I am not being facetious when I say that "Coraline" should most definitely be rated R. Seriously, your kids may come away with a whole batch of persistent nightmares. They may be set up for therapy bills in later life. This is not the way kid entertainment should be.


  • "Revolutionary Road" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Emotionally violent, relentlessly probing, "Revolutionary Road" is a tenaciously gripping movie. Its performances are sculpted perfection. That is, depending on whether you have any kind of memory of, or understanding of, the particular new American society of the early 1950s. That important, but not indispensable, element is one reason why the film has been in only limited release, there being some doubts as to audience numbers. Yet another is that this is a boldly offbeat entry which relies, to an audacious degree, on conversation almost alone.


  • "Taken" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Yes, it's absurd. But gosh, is it ever fun absurd! Give it an 8 out of 10 just because it has lots of intelligence and breathtaking action along with its Hollywood-nutsy thrill rides and constant, pulsating rhythm that just won't let you find peace, or, given the plot's urgencies, even caring about it.


  • "New in Town" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Rene Zellweger, what are you doing -- and why? You can't handle, and are not constituted to portray, this kind of role in "New in Town." In ever-more-absurdist Hollywood tradition, here goes yet another of those wearisome long-hackneyed cliches about how city slickers are bad and small town hicks are all wonderful. It might even have settled in as a tolerably sweet confection with a less effusive star, although why any would sign on to this automatic setback to their career is unclear.


  • "The Uninvited" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] So ordinary at first that it's painful, and so ho-hum through its midsection, it surprisingly manages to explode into welling suspense and one heck of a supercharged twist at the end, one you'd never expect, granting it some semblance of rescue. A film that has remarkably little original or inventive, is annoyingly flat in its forward movement, "The Uninvited" allows itself some serviceable dialogue over most of its time and is gratifyingly clear of most horror film cliches.You'll be forgiven for random yawns and occasional wonderment as to why this movie wants you to be there.


  • "Inkheart" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Lotta detail. Little involvement. Fun to watch. So easy to forget. In "Inkheart," a wildly ambitious fairy tale fantasy, a lot of people move around among a lot of objects and things, threatening each other, victimizing, controlling and, each time they do that, we're left with a shrug. Not that it hasn't been neat to watch. This film is just bristling with flawlessly done special effects, endless and countless.


  • "The Wrestler" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Wow. Imaginative cinema art, garishly virile sport, red-blooded personalities of the first magnitude. Yes, go for this, an uncommonly dramatic movie with jolting power of personality. A film of advanced megawattage in its energy, sure of its film technique, it frankly forsakes any profound plot and instead creates a story made up of crackling images and vibrant individuals, not events, although those events are done up with the most creative audio-visual power.


  • "Frost Nixon" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Tight, compact history in riveting, magnetic interactions. For viewers who don't care about Richard Nixon? Yes. Fascinating. "Frost/Nixon" is, plainly speaking, daring, innovative and mesmerizing. Daring, I say, because it's very much a talky movie. It dares to rely on powerful, conflicting personalities to generate screen voltage. For two hours.


  • "Defiance" Film Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Mercifully, the sentimentality is slight and forgivable. More importantly, however, is the natural suspense and tension that fires up organically between people facing life-and-death crises. It is the cruelty in people's choices of resolving problems between them -- and, indeed, their failure to own the fact that a choice is precisely what it is -- that is so moving. There are the details of family and community as individuals are faced with horrendous decisions of survival even as they are hunted down like beasts.


  • "Last Chance Harvey" Film Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Hollywood has plodded for so long and so ineffectually in the matter of middle-age and older-age romance that it now takes two of filmdom's most eloquent and theatrically beautiful players to get the chemistry together and do it. "Last Chance Harvey," the film, is not flawless but it is eminently honest, wonderfully satisfying to behold in the integrity of its two stars, and a joy to watch. We are talking here about two movie stars who are fine-tuned like two concert violinists picking up and interpreting each other's vibes instantaneously.


  • "Bride Wars" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Silly slapstick meets sloppy and shrill comedy. What you see is all you get from this less-than-skin-deep insult to modern femaledom. Indeed, "Bride Wars" is the first chick flick that immediately and totally rules out even the tiniest male interest and spreads its premise so thin, with such empty characters, that the entire screen space and vibration is left to squeals of "Oh, my God!" (several dozen of those).


  • "Gran Torino" Movie
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Here is Clint Eastwood, at 78, again the manly man who needs no feats of physical strength to vibrate masculinity. And his film itself? No need for modern styling, pounding close-ups and manipulative pacing for today's limited attention-span audiences. No. He owns every scene.


  • "The Spirit" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Can camp and caricatures get tiresome? Well, yeah, they can, if that's all there is. "The Spirit" shows that not all comic strips translate well to the big screen. But Frank Miller's attempt at throwing the late great Will Eisner's The Spirit onto the screen is never as large as its artwork tries to make it. His "Sin City" or a few years ago was genius; The Spirit is less so.


  • "Valkyrie" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] In "Valkyrie," one of history's most famous assassination attempts is celebrity-ized, thus diverting it from its intended impact. The film is continually running its story, in all of its strategies, tactics and anxieties, its heroism, fright and courageous individuals, with its brakes on. For although Tom Cruise performs dutifully, he is without the full subtlety of unique personality force required. And since he is critically deficient in conveying this brave man's inner force -- he's much more Cruise than Stauffenberg -- our attention, again and again, regresses to the actor, not the character. Tom's not projecting on this one, just being the actor.


  • "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Nationally, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is getting a score, on the basis of 100 to 0, scores of 100 down to 25, "A timeless masterpiece" to "Unbearably excruciating." I tend toward the latter. Director David Fincher overindulges himself. In this understandably long, long story, he nonetheless continuously loses a sense of priority as to which scenes need longer times. As a result, so, so many scenes dwell on the screen way beyond their point.


  • "Bedtime Stories" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Hey, cool job, Adam Sandler. We all knew you wanted this change. You got it, man. A really amusing, lotsa laughs, imaginative movie for any age. And just shrug off all the national critics on this; they're missing the point. "Bedtime Stories' is just plain fun.


  • "Marley & Me" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] A fairly harmless tearjerker for doggie-lovers, "Marley and Me" has virtually no romantic intrigue or other conflicts, therefore no discernible drama. Its humor is generic, not clever but workable, its emotional values superficial but easily accepted, all surrounding the 13-year dog life.


  • "Yes Man" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Fabulous idea but, for the talents of Jim Carrey, not nearly up to his capacity. "Yes Man," which essentially suggests that saying yes to everybody and everything every time is bound to get funny results, forgets that the immense comic potential of Carey does nonetheless need situations with critical mass, that is, powder keg ingredients. Lots of them. His "Liar, Liar" had them. This doesn't. It surely evokes many a chuckle but Carrey isn't about chuckles; he's about raucous bellylaughs.


  • "Seven Pounds" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] A melancholic story that doesn't seem to know how to be a film. Never, in fact, has so long a screen time been taken to say so little. "Seven Pounds" is a mournful, unmoving movie which does indeed have a plot but which also does indeed flop almost totally for lack of emotional draw. In a word, it's just plain uninteresting. Royally so. Its dramatic devices are not only as old as the hills but it seems to be ashamed of exploiting their potential.


  • "Slumdog Millionaire" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Let's just say that as far as motion picture drama goes, this is total drama. It is far beyond anything you have ever seen before. It will be a landmark movie experience for you -- a classic. "Slumdog millionaire" has picked up considerable acclaim countrywide, all totally deserved. Shot in Mumbai and Maharastra, India on an unlimited budget, it absolutely stuns you right from the opening frame with its megawatt-plus dynamics, in a sense, starting out on after-burners then blasting beyond. Oh, yeah, you say in knee-jerk response, I know, another of those stylistic visual dazzlers. No, you don't know.


  • "The Day the Earth Stood Still" Movie Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Good message. Clumsily handled. Compared to the unforgettable 1951 classic on which it's based: Forgettable. Eminently watchable for its gorgeous special effects, the spectacular new "The Day the Earth Stood Still" is a dumbed-down re-make gussied up in digital magic. Hey, give it its due: it's very absorbing in spots.


  • "Nobel Son" Movie
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Too fast with its fury, too laborious with its logic. "Nobel Son" is a bit of a mess. Its most glaring failing is in its rash moves toward action thrills which need as their launching pads a much more deliberative plot development. That is, they're too soon, too sensational. Not organic, just overt. And when those action capers run into the film's obsessive twists, they do so without really clear reasoning.


  • Rachel Getting Married Movie
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Rapid-fire, many-leveled anger and raging recriminations fuel a well-oiled pre-wedding rocky relationships film guaranteed to keep you as as uneasy as you will be fascinated. To call "Rachel Getting Married" a high mark in provocative wedding films can easily be justified.


  • Transporter 3 - Movie
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Dumb but fun, over the top with never a stop, super-duper thriller "Transporter 3" is one long caricature of everything and everybody it touches. Some of its derring-do gives new meaning to "ridiculous." And as to Jason Stratham's Frank Martin who's being compared to Daniel Craig's James Bond, he's got the bod but not the face. A partially balding nondescript can't really compete with large high cheekbones.


  • Four Christmases - Movie
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Well, if Christmas is not a holiday for the family, then what is it? Pretty dismal, says "Four Christmases" and so is the movie, a futile effort at designing family dysfunction as a normal part of our complex society. It's saturated with slapped together, bumped-up inanities guaranteed to change cheers to jeers.


  • Australia - The Movie
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Lotta courage here. It took moxie, daring and dedication to produce a two-and-a-half hour film saga set in Australia which, very deliberately, has all the sentimentality, ideal romance, plainspoken heroism, Aboriginal spiritualism, fantasy ending and flavor of the old-timey Western. And one of its recurring themes is the music and even Judy Garland visuals from "The Wizard of Oz." And now throw in the climax, the Japanese bombardment of Northern Australia on February 19, 1942.


  • "What Just Happened" Movie
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Not hilarious, but it's definitely dry humor at a sophisticated level. And the subject matter is delicious. It's been said that after all financing, technical, directorial, casting, editing, film politics and personalities are taken into account, it is a miracle that any motion picture film ever gets completed and released.


  • The Boy in the Striped Pajamas Movie
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" presents itself as an 8-year-old boy's viewpoint, but the level of the story treatment is, a bit disconcertingly, that of an adult. Yet this very unusual Holocaust tale tenaciously holds to a slowly welling suspense.


  • "Bolt" Movie
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] "Bolt," playing in 3-D in some theaters, will also keep parents reasonably amused. It's devoid of any special new style. Rather, this is yet another talking animal animation movie with ultimately flawless technique, if not the Pixar Studio productions finesse. Its action is so smooth and real.


  • "Twilight" Movie
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Vampires lite. A teenage chick flick. What director Catherine Hardwicke is dealing with here, or is trying to, is how teenage girls' rising and directionless sexuality would confront a handsome, mentally tortured vampire teenage boy. I won't even make an attempt at commenting on how effective that is in the movie. But I rather believe that teenage girl audiences will have to read their own meanings into this.


  • The Secret Life of Bees
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] A moving theme in a largely unmoving film. The book on which it's based must have been so much bigger. You can laud the beauty of emotional values in a movie endlessly, but most of us just want to be entertained. Emotions in themselves are inside of each of us; a good movie is supposed to take you over, to own you, and so to draw those emotions out. Once there, its emotions are your emotions.


  • Max Payne
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] The rating was changed from R (rightfully) to PG-13 when the production's marketing dept. realized that the only likely audience for this is teenagers. It's actually well into the R range for ugly violence. This is a real shame for Mark Wahlberg who is totally wasted in a highly intelligence-challenging film of shooting effects and a monotonous atmosphere. Also, Wahlberg should never be given humorless roles.


  • How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] This is a comedy without a personality. The substance is there, the plot is there. But the will to entertain is not. Basically, the movie has little emotional direction. For involvement, you feel an ongoing void.


  • Body of Lies
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] A Middle East spy thriller tense without suspense. That is, until the end. A film highly attuned to current events in the region, its personalities, poignant dialog and compelling mean streets and grand desert vistas dominate an only moderately interesting plot. Urgency, sometimes mortal, being the driving force over all the interactions, the constant interactions between individuals who trust not a word the other is saying generate electricity that draws you in by short and long arcs. With deftly chosen scripting of the words of each key character, you can be riveted.


  • Beverly Hills Chihuahua
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] The real eye-opener in "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" is the astonishing perfection in the talking animal technique, something which in itself is a marvel to behold. This does allow adults and animals to circulate within their own realities seamlessly, virtually giving the animals equal, if not greater, life and spirit. And importance. This being accepted, it's now up to the plot, with equal energy coming from human and nonhuman.


  • Appaloosa - Current Film
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] In this old-timey Western, here are two well-togged roving lawmen, Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch (Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen). They're fancy types, these two, and reckon as how they might not shine up to being called guns for hire. Well now, here they are moseyin' into a little New Mexico town right after the local marshal and two of his deputies have been gunned down by gang leader Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons). Bragg has in mind the total control of a major part of the territory.


  • "W" Currently Playing
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] A powerful story about a very sad man. A tragic man who dragged his country down into that tragedy. This is one totally, relentlessly fascinating movie.


  • "Rocknrolla" at the Movies
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] Harsh! Depressing. A clear alternative to hope and joy. In this stylist British crime thriller, with relentless powerhouse images of dark contrast, each and every one of them designed to keep your head off balance, the film takes you from one den and gathering of menacing men and potentially mortal situation to the next.


  • "Changeling" Review
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] A mighty triumph for Angelina Jolie, a masterful directing job by Clint Eastwood, and a deeply moving film for all, to say the least for any loving mother. One can nit-pick the film to death, but in its driving purpose to show the deepest primal responses of a wronged mother who has lost her child by abduction and the merciless arms of a corrupt prevailing city government, the film rises to expectations.


  • "Role Model," Soul Men," Madagascar" Film Reviews
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] A fairly funny comedy considering its overload of foul-mouthed gaglines, this has a suprisingly high laughs level which blind-sides you with comic capers when you hardly expect them. "Role Models," one is reluctant to admit, gets a lot of mirth out of inventive locker room humor that has a way of making you laugh even though you don't know why. The ongoing theme is that boys of any age just never grow up and it turns out, in this plot, to be the kids, not the grown-up guys, who get the most laughs. The film has an amazing flow of serviceable chuckles based on caricatures who, although fitted into a very formula flick, maintain a peppery consistency all the way through. Generally, in fact, the movie strides with such lively energy, with never an unattended moment of comedy, that one must admit that profane dialogue can actually find a place, if force-fitted, in our complex society.

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