Thursday, August 4th, 2011
Captain America
Captain America is remarkably unremarkable as a movie. Each edge is so smoothly crenulate that you can smell the cookie-cutter that molded it; and, yes, this cookie came from a tube. Whereas nearly every major superhero franchise of the last decade has been spearheaded by a director who was taking to the Hollywood bank credits [...]
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Thursday, December 2nd, 2010
Fair Game
There are a few scenes in Fair Game, laid in bars or at dinner parties and set during the lead-up to the Iraq War, in which a gaggle of rather well-heeled, soigné Washingtonians casually discuss current events with their friends, Joe Wilson (Sean Penn), the former ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe, and [...]
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Thursday, February 4th, 2010
The Messenger
Watching The Messenger, I felt as if I was moderating a group-therapy circle—a support group for veterans whose lives have been torn asunder. There seems to be something movie-ish withheld from this movie; the plot is scaled-back and purposeful: It has ends to meet. But its self-abnegation seems like a sacrifice to higher values; the [...]
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Thursday, December 10th, 2009
Brothers
It’s abundantly possible to make a good movie with much compassion and little creativity. Brothers is such a case. As the film opens, Marine Captain Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire) is about to embark on his second tour of duty in Afghanistan; his younger brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) is just getting out of the slammer. The [...]
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Thursday, November 19th, 2009
The Men Who Stare at Goats
The Men Who Stare at Goats is one of the best-titled films I’ve ever reviewed. If only it lived up to its name. To be fair to the screenwriter, Peter Straughan, and the first-time director, Grant Heslov, the subject they’ve chosen is a minefield for fair-minded adapters. They’ve drawn from a book by Welsh muckraker [...]