Film Reviews
Spider-Man: New Silk Threads
A baby wall-crawler hatches in this restart of the superhero franchise.KRISTIAN LIN
A scant five years after Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire, and Kirsten Dunst decamped from the Spider-Man series, Sony Pictures has already decided to start the series over with new talent. The resulting movie, called The Amazing Spide...
Magic Mike: Comic Strip
Steven Soderbergh’s stripper drama is more than just thongs and chest oil.KRISTIAN LIN
A few years ago, Steven Soderbergh made a movie called The Girlfriend Experience about a high-priced prostitute, in which he cast a porn star in the lead role. Instead of coming off like a stunt, his film turned out to be a ser...
Ted Talks
Seth MacFarlane knocks the stuffing out of his first movie.KRISTIAN LIN
I have never been a fan of Seth MacFarlane or Family Guy, but when I saw the trailer for his debut film Ted, I thought, “This will either be brilliant or really stupid.” Now I’ve seen the movie, and it’s pretty much bri...
People Like Us: Your Sister. Sister?
Great acting redeems this domestic drama.KRISTIAN LIN
You’d expect the co-writer of the Transformers movies, Mission: Impossible 3, and Star Trek to take up a sci-fi action thriller in that same vein for his directing debut. You’d be wrong. People Like Us is a domestic drama w...
Safety Not Guaranteed: Grand Plaza
Aubrey Plaza ponders time travel in this dazzling sci-fi comedy.KRISTIAN LIN
Every generation needs at least one sarcastic chick. We have Aubrey Plaza, whose bracing vitriol and crack comic timing have livened up films like Funny People and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and especially TV’s Parks and Rec...
Brave: Scotch Job
Pixar stumbles into mediocrity with this Highlands fable.KRISTIAN LIN
Well, everything comes to an end. Brave is Pixar’s 13th animated feature film in 17 years, and it marks the first time I walked out of a Pixar movie feeling disappointed. Many people felt that way about last year’s Cars 2. ...
Rock of Ages: Playing Jaxx
Big stars sing glam rock hits in this intriguing failure of a musical.KRISTIAN LIN
When it debuted on Broadway in 2009, the stage musical Rock of Ages lured metalheads to the theater with a neatly bombastic package of nostalgia for 1980s hair metal music. Now the movie version hits screens peddling the same t...
Intouchables: Comédie Noire
France grapples with race beneath the surface of this feted buddy movie.KRISTIAN LIN
Officially, France is a colorblind society. Unofficially, many French people of color don’t have access to the same economic and educational opportunities that white people do. This is a big reason why black and Arab youths r...
Moonrise Kingdom: Sam ♥ Suzy
I ♥ Wes Anderson’s dreamy romantic adventure for kids.KRISTIAN LIN
All of Wes Anderson’s movies are children’s movies. That’s what I realized while watching his Moonrise Kingdom, a spellbinding piece of work that opens in Fort Worth this week. You’d think his 2009 animated film, Fantas...
Prometheus: “Get It Out of Me!”
Astronauts play with fire in Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel.KRISTIAN LIN
To answer your first question about Ridley Scott’s Prometheus: Yes, it is a prequel to his 1979 sci-fi classic Alien. The director has hemmed and hawed about that in public, but the final shot of his current movie leaves no d...