'Film Reviews' Archive
Ocean’s Thirteen
Well – at least they’re back in Vegas.
In a fashionable but humorless return, George Clooney and crew take on a nasty, one-dimensional casino developer (Al Pacino) who double-crosses their pal Reuben (Eliot Gould). Plenty of cons and sleights of hand ensue, but director Stephen Soderbergh has lost the formula that made Ocean’s Eleven such a [...]
Michael Clayton
George Clooney plays a law firm ‘fixer’ whose latest assignment requires him to contain the leading partner’s descent into insanity-slash-moral-absolutism, which threatens to sabotage a multi-billion dollar case. Of course all is not as it seems, but just barely, which makes Michael Clayton an atmospheric, unsurprising film that’s good but not great. Fortunately we get [...]
Stranger Than Fiction
Inventive and amusing, if a tad too long. Will Ferrell plays Harold Crick, a lonely IRS agent who wakes up one day to hear a voice narrating his life – and foretelling his imminent death. Ferrell gives an understated performance that is sweetly funny, as opposed to the lovable boobs he portrays in most of [...]
Premonition
Worst. Film. Ever.
The minus on this failing grade is for the most glaring continuity problem I’ve seen in years. The F is for fantastically horrible. F-.
Casino Royale
Note to director Martin Campbell and screenwriters Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Paul Haggis: you had me at parkour. The Bond franchise gets a complete overhaul with this retelling of 007’s first mission, and with top-notch results. The silliness of the recent Bond flicks has vanished; Daniel Craig plays the British spy as slick, rough [...]
A Year of Reviews
One A+ (Tsotsi). One F (The Family Stone). Everything else in between.
A
American Dreamz
Breach
Capote
The Last King of Scotland
Lucky Number Slevin
Shopgirl
The Squid and the Whale
Tsotsi
Vigils (local Chicago theater production)
World Trade Center
B
Born Rich
Caché
The Departed
Inside Man
Mission Impossible 3
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
Spy Game
Training Day
C
Lord of War
Match Point
D
The Break-Up
Friends With Money
The Last Kiss
Superman Returns
Thank You [...]
Superman Returns
The largest crime that unfolds in Metropolis is not Lex Luthor’s bizarre plot to re-create the world’s supply of viable real estate. Rather, it’s an ominous evaporation of character. Superman Returns emerges as the lovechild of the superb Superman II and the horrendous Superman IV: The Quest for Peace; it’s a mishmash of silly criminals, [...]
Breach
Chris Cooper stars as FBI mole Robert Hanssen in the true story of the spy’s undoing in 2001. Ryan Phillipe holds his own as the young agent-in-training who helps catch Hanssen in the act of passing secrets to the Russians. Apparently Laura Linney thinks she’s acting in a 1930s gangster flick; I kept waiting for [...]