Death Wish transported to England. Michael Caine plays the Charles Bronson role. The thugs he murders are sufficiently evil to make their demise satisfying, but this is a dull exercise.
Harry Browne (2010) – 2 stars
Leave a comment
Iron Man 2 – 0 stars
Awful. Lots of explosions, with Aaron Sorkinesque snap-patter, minus Sorkin’s talent (which is spotty, at best), passing for dialogue. Unintelligible.
Scott Pilgrim Versus The World – 4 stars
A swift comic book brought to life. Michael Cera, bassist for a Canadian band, dreams of his love, finds her and then learns he must defeat her evil ex-boyfriends to have her. And by defeat, he must slay them in fights that resemble video game challenges. The fight scenes are ingenious and the script is consistently hip and funny. A gas.
The Other Guys – 2.5 stars
Will Ferrell’s antics have a shelf life. There were a few good gags, but Mark Wahlberg steps on a lot of them with his clod-like turn as straight man (he substitutes volume for timing). But we do get a political tract on Ponzi schemes from director Adam McKay during the credits, so, there’s that.
Red Riding – 5 stars
A British television production released theatrically in the U.S., the story is set against a backdrop of serial murders in the north of England, including the Yorkshire Ripper case. The investigation is covered in three installments: 1974, 1980 and 1983. Though the murders are the central focus, this is really a rich and gritty story about police corruption and the strain of the cases on the police and the community. I liken it to David Fincher’s masterpiece Zodiac. Brilliant.
Greenberg and Cyrus – 1 star/2 stars
Similar films about dysfunctional and barely interesting people. In Cyrus, poor John C. Reilly has the good fortune to start dating Marisa Tomei. Unfortunately, Jonah Hill (Cyrus) is Tomei’s babied adult boy and what ensues is a muted power struggle played a little too seriously when there were more laughs to be had.
Greenberg is another filmic form of torture from Noah Baumbach, who has made quite a career of making movies about unpleasant, self-centered wretches (Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney in The Squid and the Whale; Nicole Kidman in Margot at the Wedding). The sad center of Greenberg is Ben Stiller, a just-out-of-the asylum condescending dick who is house-sitting for his brother in L.A. Thankfully, unlike the prior films, Baumbach doesn’t put children front and center for the abuse he finds so illuminating.
To give credit where it is due, both Hill and Stiller do well with their appointed tasks, which is to squeeze a little humanity out of such creepy, crappy characters. And while Cyrus ends up unconvincingly sweet, Greenberg is coyly ambivalent.
But really, do we care whether an ass like Stiller may find love at the end of the day?
We do not.
The Wolfman – 2 Stars
High production much like Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It even sports Anthony Hopkins. But it lacks Coppola’s panache and sense of humor, and Benicio del Toro is one dull, brooding werewolf.
Hot Tub Time Machine – 2 stars
A bro-mance that is actually a menage-a-trois. John Cusack, Craig Robinson and Rob Corddry go back to the ski lodge of their youth, are transported to 1986, and proceed to do unfunny and boring stuff (often involving their bodily fluids) in the hopes of getting back to the future. Cusack looks like a hostage.
Shutter Island – 1 star
Relentless, way too slick and patently absurd. The film gave me a vicious headache and I soon felt like the rat (Leonardo DiCaprio) in the maze of the insane asylum.
Martin Scorsese begs us to ask – is DiCaprio crazy or isn’t he?
You won’t care. You’ll do most anything to make it stop.
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark – 1 star
Scary and interesting only up and until three things happen: you see the CGI little gnomes who are causing the trouble (they look ridiculous); Katie Holmes bashes your sensibilities into submission with her leaden acting; and you realize there is no adequate backstory for why the house is haunted by CGI gnomes. It just is.
I confess, I got punked. I saw Guillermo del Toro’s name associated with the picture. He directed The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth and Cronos , which were spooky, atmospheric and rich.
Alas, the movie says Guillermo del Toro presents, not Guillermo del Toro directs.
filmvetter 