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Starring: Jared Leto, Lindsay Lohan, Judah Friedlander, Ursula Abbott, Jean... Review: Don't hammer this film for trying to get inside the head of Mark David Chapman before he shot John Lennon outside the rock legend's New York apartment on December 8th, 1980. Hammer it instead for failing to do so with any depth or insight. It's not that Jared Leto, who gained nearly seventy pounds to play Chapman, doesn't attack the role with all he's got. It's that J.P. Schaefer's film, with Lindsay Lohan as another Lennon fan, has nothing to say. Schaefer obsesses that Chapman met Lennon while carrying a copy of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, which ends at Chapter 26. Did Chapman think of the murder as his ending to Salinger's Holden Caulfield saga? Such conjecture prompts just one response: Thanks for nothing. Rating: 1 Stars |
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Starring: Simon Pegg, Hank Azaria, Ameet Chana, Dylan Moran, Thandie Newton Review: Why in hell is queens-born David Schwimmer making his directing debut with a British farce? Damned if I know. But the Friends star has a welcome eye for laughs that sneak in around familiar corners. It's also a big comic boost that Simon Pegg, the offbeat star of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, plays Dennis, a security guard in a lingerie shop. Five years earlier, dumbass Dennis ditched his pregnant fiancée, Libby (gorgeous Thandie Newton), at the altar. Now she's about to marry Whit (Hank Azaria), a rich American. Desperate to win Libby back, Dennis competes against Whit in a London charity marathon to prove he can man up. "I'm not fat," Dennis insists, "I'm unfit." So's the plot, which sparks only when Schwimmer spins knockabout variations on it. The funniest scenes are... Rating: 2 Stars |
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Starring: Jim Sturgess, Kate Bosworth, Laurence Fishburne, Kevin Spacey Review: Odds are you're going to like this lively spin on the true story of six MIT mathletes who broke the Vegas bank in the 1990s. Loosely adapted from Ben Mezrich's best-selling Bringing Down the House, the movie stretches facts like taffy but never shirks its responsibility to entertain. And, jeez, it's a kick to see Kevin Spacey up to his old tricks as the sultan of snark. Spacey plays Mickey Rosa, a math prof who cherry-picks the brainiest students to join his secret club of card counters. They rake it in at blackjack on weekend trips to Vegas. His newest recruit is Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess), an innocent with a knack for numbers to rival Rain Man's. Sturgess does a nifty job as this poor Boston lad, given that he's a Brit best known for starring in Across the Universe. The... Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: Ryan Phillippe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Rob Brown, Channing Tatum, ... Review: Here's the first major movie of the new year that touches greatness, and damn if there isn't a curse hanging over it. Stop-Loss, directed with ferocity and feeling by Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry), is up against the war raging between audiences and films about Iraq. Box-office casualties last year include Lions for Lambs, Rendition, Redacted, Grace Is Gone and the unfairly scorned In the Valley of Elah. Stop-Loss has the juice to break the jinx. The emotional battlefield on which Peirce paints her canvas strikes a universal chord that transcends politics and preaching. Peirce, who co-wrote the script with Mark Richard, takes us inside the minds and hearts of soldiers who enlisted after 9/11. Why? "To get the people who had done this," in the words of Peirce, whose brother... Rating: 3 Stars |
