The Invention of Lying
April 30th, 2009
A comedy set in a world where no one has ever lied, until a writer seizes the opportunity for personal gain.
Archive for April, 2009
Humpday
April 30th, 2009
Its been a decade since Ben and Andrew were the bad boys of their college campus. Ben has settled down and found a job, wife, and home. Andrew took the alternate route as a vagabond artist, skipping the globe from Chiapas to Cambodia. When Andrew shows up, unannounced, on Bens doorstep, they easily fall back into their old dynamic of heterosexual one-upmanship. After a night of perfunctory carousing, the two find themselves locked in a mutual dare: to enter an amateur porn contest.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
April 30th, 2009
We all say that we go into summer movies for the explosions, the fight scenes, and the chance to turn our brains off while gazing at chiseled biceps. But IX-Men Origins: WolverineI is proof that we dont really mean it. For a summer movie to achieve that popcorn-munching high, theres got to be some level of attention to narrative coherence, character arcs, and all that hoity-toity stuff that you think just comes in the Oscar bait movies.
Paper Heart
April 30th, 2009
Charlyne Yi does not believe in love. Or so she says. Well, at the very least, she doesnt believe in fairy-tale love or the Hollywood mythology of love, and her own experiences have turned her into yet another modern-day skeptic. PAPER HEART follows Charlyne as she embarks on a quest across America to make a documentary about the one subject she doesnt fully understand.
Limits of Control
April 30th, 2009
|
Starring: Isaach de Bankole, Alex Descas, Jean-Francois Stevenin, Luis Tosa... Review: Even the great ones hit snags. With The Limits of Control, Jim Jarmsuch gets tangled up in his own deadpan. I'd explain a little of the plot, but there isn't any. Just the stoic visage of Isaach De Bankolé as a nameless hitman who wanders through non-touristy Spain (shot with a poet's eye by the masterful Christopher Doye) doing meet-and-greets with terrific actors, such as Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Gael Garcia Bernal and John Hurt. They don't act, really. They strike poses. But it's a kick just to watch Swinton swanning around in a cheap white wig that makes her look like Jarmusch or a maybe daughter of Lee Marvin. When the hitman just stares at her, she expounds on Orson Welles' The Lady From Shanghai, another treatise on cinematic abstraction. Jarmusch is the antidote to... Rating: 2 Stars |
The Limits of Control
April 30th, 2009|
|
Starring: Isaach de Bankole, Alex Descas, Jean-Francois Stevenin, Luis Tosa... Review: Even the great ones hit snags. With The Limits of Control, Jim Jarmsuch gets tangled up in his own deadpan. I'd explain a little of the plot, but there isn't any. Just the stoic visage of Isaach De Bankolé as a nameless hitman who wanders through non-touristy Spain (shot with a poet's eye by the masterful Christopher Doye) doing meet-and-greets with terrific actors, such as Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Gael Garcia Bernal and John Hurt. They don't act, really. They strike poses. But it's a kick just to watch Swinton swanning around in a cheap white wig that makes her look like Jarmusch or a maybe daughter of Lee Marvin. When the hitman just stares at her, she expounds on Orson Welles' The Lady From Shanghai, another treatise on cinematic abstraction. Jarmusch is the antidote to... Rating: 2 Stars |
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
April 30th, 2009
|
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Lacey Chabert, Michael Doug... Review: Look, I wouldn't mind a comic desecreation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, as long as the darned thing was funny. Hell, Bill Murray hit that mark twenty years ago in Scrooged. But Ghosts of Girlfriends Past never comes as close as spitting distance to a laugh. Matthew McConaughey, who hit a comedy low (I thought) in Fool's Gold, sinks ever lower as hotshot celeb photographer Connor Mead, a stud who badmouths marriage to his about-to-be-wed kid brother (Breckin Meyer). Connor, a Scrooge when it comes to commitment, gets a life lesson from Uncle Wayne (Michael Douglas, the film's one bright spot), another man-whore who comes back from the dead to school Connor in the error of recreational boffing. (Watch Peter... Rating: 1 Stars |
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
April 30th, 2009
|
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Dominic Monaghan, Rya... Review: Summer movies whimper to a start with the wheezing Wolverine, a transparent attempt to squeeze a faltering franchise for its last drop of box-office juice. It should work for at least a week, until Star Trek opens and blows it out of the water by showing how an origin story should be done. Anyone looking for dangerous thrills is out of luck unless they risk federal prosecution by illegally downloading the movie on the Web. (Watch Peter Travers' video review of Wolverine) The movie itself is all PG-13 prim and proper. Look at the drag-ass title — X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Presumably, that will separate it from the first two X-Men movies, directed by Bryan Singer, which were pretty good, and the third one, directed by Brett Ratner, which should have been subtitled, X-Men:... Rating: 2 Stars |
Review: ‘The Garden’ doc bets on the farm
April 30th, 2009
The Garden RATING: (POLITE APPLAUSE)Documentary. Starring Joan Baez, Daryl Hannah and Dennis Kucinich. Directed by Scott Hamilton Kennedy. (Not rated. 80 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.) A vermin-infested plot of land just a few miles from the heart of the Los...
Review: ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ can’t cut it
April 30th, 2009
X-Men Origins: Wolverine RATING: (SNOOZING VIEWER)Science-fiction adventure. Starring Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston and Lynn Collins. Directed by Gavin Hood. (PG-13. 107 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.) There's an implicit threat in the title "X-...
