I am being perfectly sincere when I claim that Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight is the worst book I’ve ever read all the way through (there are at least a couple of worse novels that I abandoned early on). It has a perfect combination of dreadful prosody, ill-formed characters, an unengaging narrative (in those rare moments when […]
Three of the last four weekends have seen a G-rated Disney film with essentially no value to an audience over 12 years old leading the box-office: first Beverly Hills Chihuahua, and now High School Musical 3: Senior Year, although at least this sequel to the two blockbuster Disney Channel Original Movies didn’t LIE about itself […]
Woody Allen’s projects aren’t films so much as they are changes in the weather: sometimes delightful, sometimes annoying, nothing that anybody says or does can do much to change them, and they occur in a roughly annual cycle. With that in mind (extremely strained metaphor to follow), his latest feature, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, is like […]
It may still be the depths of summer, but the (very British) adaptation of a (very British) classic novel set in the costume- and set-designer friendly 1930s positively shrieks “Oscarbait!” from the highest rafters, and by all means, the new version of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited is a perfect exemplar of the form: it’s been […]
Mamma Mia! is the movie version of Red Bull. It is absolutely going to raise your energy level, but it’s practically guaranteed to give you the jitters, it’s artificially sweet, and it leaves a foul chemical aftertaste. Based on the ginormous Broadway hit, Mamma Mia! begins on a supremely photogenic Greek island with Sophie (Amanda […]
May we cut to the chase? The Ruins is fucking awful. I’m sorry if that was indelicate, but sometimes it just does not do to pussyfoot around things. There’s really nothing in the film of any entertainment value, not even the inadvertent sort. It’s powerfully stupid in concept and execution – I am told by […]
It’s easy to find faults with Stop-Loss: with the sometimes unconvincing narrative, the frequently bland characterisations, the dumbfounding ending. But here’s why I’m not going to try very hard to dig up those flaws: one character in Stop-Loss says, very angrily, “Fuck the President,” and with 289 days left for one of the most unpopular […]
There is no earthly reason that a film about gorgeous young people making vast sums of money in Vegas, spending it in the most conspicuous and glamorous ways possible, generally making a mockery of the story’s nominal moral about losing yourself to the dark lord Mammon, should be even a little bit tolerable. But damned […]
First, the caveat: I go through exactly the same process with every Gus Van Sant film I’ve ever seen. Immediately after it’s over, there’s a state of bliss brought on by the director’s exceptionally idiosyncratic style. After a few hours, that fades into a serious appreciation of what he achieves with his technique, coupled with […]
I hope that all the people who slagged on Elizabeth: The Golden Age have learned their lesson. The Other Boleyn Girl commits most of the same sins as that film, but fails to be so joyfully campy, lacking as it does the same overblown sapphism as Shekhar Kapur’s terrible misfire. Okay, it lacks onscreen sapphism. […]
Aside from having one of the most delightfully gaudy titles given to any sequel in recent years, there’s primarily one way that Step Up 2 The Streets improves upon 2006’s Step Up: significantly better dance numbers. I was going at first to write “good dance numbers,” but that seemed needlessly harsh to the first film, […]
I went to see Jumper with a female friend, who wanted to go because Hayden Christensen is pretty. I wanted to go because Rachel Bilson is pretty. Our post-film analysis concluded that because Jamie Bell is so pretty now, it makes watching him as a 13-year-old in Billy Elliot kind of awkward. So no, I […]
