Search for 2009

What happens when Hollywood marries Charles Dickens, that wacky 19th century romantic comedy scribe, to Matthew McConaughey, that wacky naked bongo drum player? To begin with, great expectations should be curbed. The result is not as good as it sho...

Director Andre Téchiné (My Favorite Season, Wild Reeds, Thieves, Alice and Martin) has never been shy about confronting difficult subjects in his films, as one glance at his loaded résumé will reveal. Téchiné enjoys exploring dark, complex ide...

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, the third and final piece of the cinematic adaptation of Stieg Larsson's The Millennium Trilogy, is an entertaining thriller. That said, it's the weakest of the films, falling a length or two behind The Girl ...

The Girl Who Played with Fire, the second part of Stieg Larsson's enormously popular The Millennium Trilogy, follows The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and precedes The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. Filmed back-to-back-to-back, the three movies ...

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo belongs to a rare genre: the literate motion picture murder mystery/thriller. (Coincidentally, I saw another good example, the Korean Mother, earlier in the week, but this one is better.) It unfolds not with the br...

Voyeurism is a favorite pursuit of Americans, and The Girlfriend Experience works in large part because it indulges that pastime. The fascination with the film is that it offers an arm's-length opportunity to peer through a peephole into a lifesty...

The Great Buck Howard offers John Malkovich an opportunity to do a little mugging for the camera as he plays a character who is, by nature, larger than life. Buck Howard, a fictional representation of The Amazing Kreskin, is part star and part lou...

It may be that, through a combination of incompetence and ego, Rob Zombie has finally brought an end to Michael Myers' 31-year killing spree. The latest chapter of the venerable slasher film saga represents the tenth movie to use the title (althou...

The Hangover begins and ends conventionally but, in between, it's not afraid to go off the rails. Unlike most so-called "comedies," this one can claim the virtue of being reasonably funny. It never tries too hard, the actors have a good sense of ...

An interesting question occasioned by the release of Hannah Montana: The Movie is whether the motion picture incarnation of the popular TV show is catching the backend of the pop phenomenon wave. Certainly, when the 3D Miley Cyrus concert movie wa...