Drive, starring the currently ubiquitous Ryan Gosling, is in part an homage to Walter Hill’s The Driver (1978) and quite an earnest endeavor: a post-modernist situation lacking most of the tropes and characteristics of the post-modern film.
Read more »
Green Lantern is the kind of superhero that could never feasibly have been rendered without digital effects. But should it have been rendered at all? Or is it more worthy than most of the reviews are making it out to be?
Read more »
The inevitable sequel to the crass comedy hit 'The Hangover: Part II' brings back Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and Zach Galifianakis, the bachelor party trio from hell. But it’s just not clicking this time around.
Read more »
'Kings of Pastry' is a documentary that focuses on several pastry chefs who yearn for and compete for the Meilleur Ouvrier de France in the category of Pastry-making, an elite tradesperson award in France. Despite some clunkiness, on the whole it's a jewel.
Read more »
Rango, the new animated feature starring Johnny Depp, channels the Spaghetti Western, and is noteworthy for a design sense that's sharper and more distinct than the average animated film.
Read more »
With fiction wearing the garb of non-fiction and the growing scrutiny of documentaries as truth, the lines continue to blur between these two supposedly oppositional types of film.
Read more »
Eviscerated as it was by critics, one might wonder why anyone would bother seeing M. Night Shyamalan's 'The Last Airbender.' Well, my curiosity, she is a morbid thing. I’ve watched all of Shyamalan’s films with an increasing anticipation of their burgeoning badness.
Read more »
Director Darren Aronofsky’s new film, 'Black Swan,' channels the likes of Stanley Kubrick and Roman Polanski at their most psychologically dark and sadistic. Where 'The Wrestler' toyed with a sense of redemption, only to have that redemption revoked, Black Swan is much more focused on a hopeless slide into insanity.
Read more »
Even for Disney, coloring by numbers doesn’t always add up to a good product. But what about in the case of "Tangled" (which was renamed from the original "Rapunzel" into something less outwardly princess-y)?
Read more »
Ken reviews an oldie--an exploitation film about exploitation. 'Scum of the Earth' concerns sleazy men who trick young girls into posing naked for photos and then blackmails them to go further.
Read more »
And the Oscar Goes to ... Steve Martin (and the Viewing Public)