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12 articles
Empty Calories
24 December 2009 9:26 AM, PST
Director Guy Ritchie's talent for stirring violence and barely concealed homoeroticism remain very much on display in "Sherlock Holmes," his first period piece and most flagrant effort to start a new franchise. But for all the film's wit and zing, there's no momentum -- we get a series of stirring, entertaining scenes, but they never add up to a complete story. It's a series of desserts with no main course.
Robert Downey Jr. stars as an eccentric, cerebral Holmes whose fighting style reminds us why some call boxing "the sweet science." (One of Ritchie's coolest moves is to break down the sequence of blows with which Holmes plans to subdue his opponent before the sleuth actually does so.) Holmes' longtime companion... make that bosom buddy... make that close friend, Dr. Watson (Jude Law), is getting married and moving out of their Baker Street digs, but Holmes barely has time to pout, »
- Alonso Duralde
Bowing Down to Paul Bettany
23 December 2009 9:36 PM, PST
British actor Paul Bettany has the dashing looks and commanding presence of a leading man, but his filmography bolsters the case that he's not a creature of vanity or easy paychecks. Whether comparing his drunken Chaucer in "A Knight's Tale" to his ruthless thug in "Gangster No. 1," or his hypocritical do-gooder in Lars von Trier's arthouse masterpiece "Dogville" to his self-flagellating albino monk in a splashy blockbuster like "The Da Vinci Code," Bettany continually proves himself an intelligent and versatile performer who's passionate about new career challenges.
In director Jean-Marc Vallée's luxurious new biopic "The Young Victoria," Bettany co-stars as Lord Melbourne, a Prime Minister who became the 18-year-old, freshly ascended Queen Victoria's self-serving political tutor. Set in 1837, the film portraitizes Victoria (Emily Blunt) as we haven't seen her: a progressive-minded, spirited beauty in the early days of her reign and her courtship with Prince Albert »
- Aaron Hillis
The Most Subversive Performances of 2009
22 December 2009 9:21 PM, PST
In his 1966 essay entitled "The Subverters," Manny Farber hoped "for a new award at the year's end: Most Subversive Actor." His complete film criticism, "Farber On Film," was published this year, and in his honor I'm submitting a list of five nominees for this wished-for fake trophy. But his definition of "subversive" is a tricky one -- at the beginning of the essay, he describes the "subversive nature of the medium: the flash-bomb vitality that one scene, actor, or technician injects across the grain of a film."
For Farber, movies are complex mechanisms built upon the collision of artistic temperaments, not monoliths that can be encapsulated in a single theme, performance or mood. So he focuses on the small, telling details that exist on the outskirts of the plot, thrilling to actors who "can ply around the edges, trying to budge a huge, flabby movie script". It's the marvel of »
- R. Emmet Sweeney
The Adventures of Baron Gilliam
22 December 2009 12:53 PM, PST
When Heath Ledger passed away in January 2008, he was in the midst of shooting his second collaboration with famed filmmaker and former Monty Python member Terry Gilliam. His death should have doomed "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus." But Gilliam, who'd already had "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" fall apart, as famously documented in 2002's "Lost in La Mancha," is no stranger to on-set calamities. After some soul-searching and prodding from supportive colleagues, the show went on, this time with the help of Gilliam's pals Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell, all of whom play fantasy versions of Ledger's charlatan, Tony, when he passes through traveling showman Dr. Parnassus' magical Imaginarium mirror.
Given the film's conceit about a portal to a world in which dreams come true, the role swapping is a device that's not only clever but that seems like a natural outgrowth of the story, which wrestles »
- Nick Schager
Running Amunk for the Holidays
22 December 2009 11:59 AM, PST
Happy holidays, everyone! Those willing and able to drag themselves away from the huge pile of swag under the tree can enjoy the late Heath Ledger's final performance, a Jude Law double bill and a drolly comic Romanian police procedural underneath among other holiday presents that await at the multiplex.
"Alvin and The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel"
With the tagline "Munk Yourself" sounding more like a threat than a come-on, the high-pitched trio of singing rodents return just in time for exhausted moms to plunk the rugrats down at the multiplex after the presents are unwrapped while they snore quietly in the back row. Betty Thomas, who has some kid-themed kid-themed hijinks with on her CV, steps in for the first film's helmer Tim Hill and trades out her experience with real critters on "Dr. Dolittle" for these much less messy (not to mention non-union) digital substitutes. Jason Lee reprises his role as Dave, »
- Neil Pedley
2009's Most Memorable Critical Dust-Ups
22 December 2009 11:57 AM, PST
Just as the Tiger Woods scandal snuck up on sports writers in this tail end of '09, New York Times critic Manohla Dargis' f-bomb filled interview on the state of women in Hollywood has become the gift that has just kept giving this holiday season for those who still enjoy a good old fashioned critical beatdown.
It's a worthy capper for a year that began with Variety critic John Anderson literally punching producer's rep Jeff Dowd at Sundance over his negative opinion of "Dirt! The Movie." (He never wrote the review after the incident or the parody videos that followed.)
Overall, it's been an interesting year for criticism and film writing in general, as massive media layoffs have led to established names making their mark online. With fewer positions, more writers are having to become a jack-of-all-trades and then compete with those who understood this as a fact of life long ago. »
- Stephen Saito
The Best Films of 2009
22 December 2009 11:57 AM, PST
Matt Singer: We entered 2009 with a new president who promised to bring our country hope. But looking back at the year in film, I don't see a lot of hope; I see a lot of grief and despair. Oh sure, the box office charts were dominated by your now-typical assortment of franchises, spin-offs, reboots and sequels -- a major cause of grief and despair for some -- but you also had enough apocalypse movies to fill a book on Biblical prophecy. Even some of the obligatory superheroes got dark: the world (spoiler alert!) doesn't end in "Watchmen," but it comes awfully close.
There was an air of doom in certain quarters of the film industry this year too, as the effects of the bad economy rippled through everything from festival attendance to the shriveling ranks of working film critics. Examining my own list of the year's best, I find that »
- Alison Willmore
The Best Films to Go Direct to DVD in 2009
22 December 2009 11:56 AM, PST
DVDs may be sooner or later drummed out of existence -- by online downloads, at first, I'd guess, reducing movie "releases" to nothing more than press announcements of availability -- but for now they're still "things" you can buy or rent, physical manifestations of the art form, not just the opportunity for access. In the process, they're continuing as our default B-movie distribution stream, offering up indies and foreign films and unforeseen archivals that had a snowball's hellbound chance at finding theatrical screentime. These are still not eligible for any year-end toasts, absurdly enough, and so here's my list of the best of the year's straight-to-digi-vid, for which the only qualification is being entirely overlooked, this year or ever, by our theatrical distribution wimps, and being new to U.S. home video of any stripe.
15. "Absurdistan"
(Veit Helmer, Germany/Russia/Azerbaijan, 2008)
A bawdy Caucasus folktale, Helmer's nutty yarn visits a »
- Michael Atkinson
Fight Scenes, Chemistry and Other Unheralded Joys
21 December 2009 4:19 PM, PST
Screw "best performance," "best director," "best film of the year" (well, not that -- we weigh in on that in our top tens here). In this week's IFC News podcast, the first of a two-parter, we call out some of the other highlights from the year in cinema we feel deserve recognition, from the best fight scenes to the most memorable on-screen chemistry.
Download: MP3, 44:11 minutes, 40.5 Mb
Subscribe to the podcast: [iTunes] [Xml] »
- Alison Willmore
Something Borrowed, Something Blue
21 December 2009 12:25 PM, PST
I can imagine Robert Zemeckis -- whose botched motion-capture animated features "The Polar Express" and "A Christmas Carol" were full of rubbery, dead-eyed, freakish-looking human constructs -- watching James Cameron's "Avatar" with an expression on his face not unlike F. Murray Abraham's Salieri listening to his first Mozart composition in "Amadeus."
From a technical standpoint, "Avatar" is a game-changer, a paradigm shift, the greatest thing since sliced "2001." In the same way that "The Matrix" and its technological advances reverberated over the ensuing decade, so will "Avatar" act as a bellwether for the next wave of effects-heavy genre films.
I just wish it were a better movie. For all of Cameron's soaring accomplishments in creating realistic motion-capture characters and his deft handling of the new era of 3D, "Avatar" feels both familiar and overlong. You've traveled this road before, even if now you're doing it in a blinged-out luxury »
- Alonso Duralde
Maggie Gyllenhaal, Young Old Soul
21 December 2009 12:25 PM, PST
It's true that Maggie Gyllenhaal's first two films were directed by her father Stephen (1992's "Waterland" and the following year's "A Dangerous Woman"), but no one was crying nepotism by the time she broke out of Sundance with 2002's pitch-black comedy "Secretary," an astute character study on Bdsm behavior in which she bared all -- figuratively, literally and both ways boldly. Since then, Gyllenhaal's carved out an eclectic path through indie cinema ("SherryBaby," "Donnie Darko") and mainstream fare ("World Trade Center," "The Dark Knight"), with her richest roles typically emerging from the smaller passion projects that she clearly loves most.
Such is the case with first-time filmmaker Scott Cooper's charming country-music drama "Crazy Heart," adapted from Thomas Cobb's novel and featuring the music of co-producer T-Bone Burnett. In a performance that just nabbed him a Golden Globe nomination, Jeff Bridges headlines as 57-year-old crooner legend Bad Blake, »
- Aaron Hillis
The Year's Most Cinematic Games
21 December 2009 12:25 PM, PST
Throughout 2009, the intersection of video games and films has been a seething hot spot, both culturally and for business. And though this marriage is fraught with plenty of potential hazards -- best seen in the unkillable and still usually awful game-to-film adaptation -- there's no denying that's plenty of room for both mediums to share and grow.
Games tend to be more successful when they focus on their essentials, and films usually thrive when they don't try to hard to duplicate their interactive competitors, but there are no hard-and-fast rules for this developing relationship. And there's no reason to believe that, as films and games continue along semi-parallel tracks, they won't become even better at synthesizing their unique elements.
And new developments are already taking place. 2009 was a banner year for games that delivered movie-like experiences by blending user-operated mayhem with filmic set-pieces, storytelling and structures. You can definitely make »
- Nick Schager
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