The critic’s picks: Four films you shouldn’t miss at the 25th Virginia Film Festival
You know you’ve got a good film festival, like this year’s Virginia Film Festival, when it gives you a sense of the world seeming small and large all at once. Small for having gathered so many mini-worlds in one place; large for, well, the overall largeness they collectively imply. Bearing in mind that films made […]
Film review: Finding Nemo 3D
The 3D re-release of Pixar’s 2003 undersea saga may or may not be a bid from director Andrew Stanton to make back some of the cash his John Carter lost at the box office. Or it may just be de rigueur for controlling partner and distributor Disney to slap a 3D stamp on its most […]
Film review: Lawless
With more precision and presence of mind, Lawless might have pitched itself as an origin story of the whole gangster-movie genre. But like the transparent moonshine its backwoods brooders guzzle down in just such a way as to remind us it’s fake, the movie itself seems conspicuously diluted, more water than fire. Sourced from Matt […]
Film review: Celeste and Jesse Forever
When you’re young and in love, “forever” is a word you dare to carve in tree trunks or wedding cakes. Getting older, if you’re not careful, that same word could mean a purgatory of codependence. Such is the wry wisdom of Celeste and Jesse Forever, a romantic comedy whose main characters spend the duration figuring […]
Film review: The Bourne Legacy
The best way to enjoy The Bourne Legacy is by not having seen the other three Bourne films. (Oops.) That way, those trilogy tidbits which play out again here, as a sort of instigating background action, won’t seem redundant but instead like alluring ads for the better and more adroitly managed movies that still await […]
Film review: The Campaign
The agenda of director Jay Roach’s new movie is obviously not to mine the finer nuances of American electoral procedures. This might come as a shock or a relief, depending on whether you go into The Campaign remembering Roach as the politically-minded maker of HBO’s Recount and Game Change or you only know him from […]
Film review: Total Recall
And so another Philip K. Dick story gets another shot at being another movie. Funny how hard it is not to go in feeling protective and skeptical, as if Paul Verhoeven’s admittedly singular Schwarzenegger staple from 1990 were some kind of inviolable masterpiece. This version, from director Len Wiseman and a complex web of writers, […]
Film review: Beasts of the Southern Wild
The feature debut from writer-director Benh Zeitlin, working with playwright Lucy Alibar and a New Orleans collective, rides in on a murky flood of festival hype. And what caused that anyway? The inevitable Sundance-stamped confluence of poverty porn and indie quaintness? Wow, already this is sounding cynical, but Beasts of the Southern Wild has a […]
The Watch; R, 98 minutes; Regal Downtown Mall 6
Do not think that just because its name was changed, the movie formerly known as Neighborhood Watch has in any way been neutered. Granted, it does have some fertility issues, even within the plot, but those were there to begin with. You can rest assured that The Watch, as it’s now called, takes the maintenance […]
The Dark Knight Rises; PG-13, 164 minutes; Regal Seminole Square 4
No wonder Bruce Wayne retired from being Batman. Everybody wants to psychoanalyze the guy: His butler, his burglar, his nemesis, his police commissioner, and practically anyone with a hand in managing his assets. Among other things, he is accused of pretense and, perhaps worse, of “practiced apathy.” Well, it was a double identity, and a […]
Moonrise Kingdom; PG-13, 94 minutes; Regal Downtown Mall 6
The new Wes Anderson movie is certainly a richer pastiche than anything else you’ll see at the multiplex this season. And in its Andersonian manner, Moonrise Kingdom is a nourishing regressive pleasure, a sort of summer movie for grown-ups. Yes, the manner is mannered, but the intention is noble: to affirm the dignity of escapism […]
The Amazing Spider-Man; PG-13, 136 minutes; Carmike Cinema 6
Odd that a movie about an arachnoid teenager coming of age and falling in love and doing battle with a lizard-man to save Manhattan should be so forgettable. What to blame but reboot-itis? Sam Raimi’s trilogy of just a few years ago was after all just a numbered series of spider-men, but this new movie […]
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To Rome With Love at Vinegar Hill Theatre
The eternal city hosts an aspiring cast that includes Alessandro Tiberi, Roberto Della Casa, and Penélope Cruz in Woody Allen’s To Rome With Love. (Sony Pictures Classics) For some of us, Woody Allen could film the phone book and we’d find pleasure in it: How nice all those listings might look in his signature white-on-black […]
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Seeking a Friend for the End of the World; R, 94 minutes; Regal Downtown Mall 6
Keira Knightley and Steve Carell have no future in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. (Focus Features) What do we know from movies about the apocalypse? Obviously not very much, or else they wouldn’t keep repeating it. This might suggest some existential panic, but a case could be made that variation on […]
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Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted; PG, 85 minutes; Carmike Cinema 6
(Paramount Pictures) Obviously pluralism is a high priority for Madagascar 3. Featuring the voices of Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith, Sacha Baron Cohen, Cedric the Entertainer, Andy Richter, Bryan Cranston, Jessica Chastain, and Martin Short, this is the one about the lion, the zebra, the hippo, and the giraffe, along […]
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Prometheus; R, 124 minutes; Regal Seminole Square 4
Michael Fassbender stars in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, an appendage to the sci-fi horror franchise Alien. (Twentieth Century Fox) In 1979, the crew of the space vessel Nostromo came upon a shipwreck, in whose cockpit sat the fossilized corpse of a giant man with his guts blown inside out. What was that all about, the […]
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Blockbuster pop quiz
Like so much Christmas crap in the drugstore on the day after Halloween, the summer movie season comes on too early and too strong.
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The Dictator; R, 83 minutes; Regal Downtown Mall 6
The tale of how Admiral General Aladeen became President Prime Minister Admiral General Aladeen is not one for the ages. As told by The Dictator,
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The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel; PG-13, 124 minutes; Vinegar Hill Theatre
An A-list of golden year actors including (from left) Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, and Bill Nighy round out the cast of the counter-blockbuster, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. (Fox Searchlight) Upon arrival at The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, its first guests cannot conceal their disappointment. “You Photoshopped it!” one says, aghast at how shabby […]
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Dark Shadows; PG-13, 113 minutes; Carmike Cinema 6
Johnny Depp stars in Tim Burton’s over-the-top adaptation of the ’60s supernatural soap opera, “Dark Shadows.” (Photo by Warner Brothers) Even in our dimmest memories of the original “Dark Shadows” TV show, the reluctant vampire Barnabas Collins stands out. He wasn’t a major player at first, but he had a way of chomping at the […]
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Marvel’s The Avengers; PG-13, 155 minutes; Regal Seminole Square 4
Marvel Comics’ action figure all-stars come to life on the big screen (above: Jeremy Renner, Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson) in Joss Whedon’s production of Marvel’s The Avengers. (Disney Pictures) It seems like a fine idea to put Joss Whedon in charge of Marvel’s The Avengers. Given his knack for wisecracking-ensemble revitalizations of chancy entertainment properties […]
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Marley; PG-13, 144 minutes; Vinegar Hill Theatre
After years in the making, Marley, the documentary of Rastafarian reggae legend Bob Marley was released on 4/20. (Magnolia Pictures) At first glance, I gleaned from an e-mail subject line only that it was a movie and that it was called Marley. I drew a breath, made a face. One more treacle bomb from the […]
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The Kid with a Bike; Not rated, 87 minutes; Vinegar Hill Theatre
Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s The Kid With A Bike stars Thomas Doret and Cécile De France in search of a heartful home. (Sundance Selects) Sibling Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne bring their customary immediacy and unsentimental compassion to this naturalistic fable of an innocently furious at-risk kid (Thomas Doret) who finds himself […]
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Jiro Dreams of Sushi; PG, 81 minutes; Vinegar Hill Theatre
Lauded as the best sushi chef on the planet, Jiro Ono (left) defines the secrets of success in David Gelb’s documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi. (Magnolia Pictures) One reason it’s so hard to get a table at Sukiyabashi Jiro, the unprepossessing sushi restaurant wedged beneath an office building just next to a Tokyo subway station, […]
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American Reunion; R, 113 minutes; Carmike Cinema 6
It’s a little unnerving how the American Pie movies are starting to add up to some kind of national sociology. With the latest, American Reunion, exuding a relaxed sense of duty, the whole franchise seems like the adolescent sex-farce equivalent of Michael Apted’s Up series
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Titanic 3D; PG-13, 195 minutes; Regal Seminole Square Cinema 4
Relive the tragic magic of Titanic, re-released in 3D to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the ship’s sinking. (20th Century Fox) 1. It was kind of a thing once, and that was only in 2D! Exactly how did an adolescent love story set in 1912 on a famously ill-fated luxury ocean liner become the biggest […]
The Hunger Games; PG-13, 142 minutes; Regal Seminole Square 4
Jennifer Lawrence stars in the post-apocalyptic death match drama, The Hunger Games, based on the best-selling novel by Suzanne Collins. (Lionsgate Films) Odds are, by the time you read this, you’ll already have seen it. Possibly more than once. So let’s discuss. How about those Hunger Games, huh?! Speaking of odds, let’s speak of odds, […]