Film Reviews
Dark Knight Rises: Bane Capital
Batman hangs up his cowl in Christopher Nolan’s final chapter.KRISTIAN LIN
If The Dark Knight Rises is truly Christopher Nolan’s last Batman film, this is a hell of a way for the series to go out. While this third chapter isn’t as cogent a political statement as The Dark Knight and doesn’t offer...
Catching Up with Keeyes
The Fort Worth filmmaker goes global after a busy year.KRISTIAN LIN
Jon Keeyes featured regularly in the pages of Fort Worth Weekly in the mid-2000s as a filmmaker whose locally made slasher flicks such as American Nightmare and Suburban Nightmare found national distribution. Since this paper l...
Woody Goes To Rome
And takes lots of famous actors with him in this scattered comedy.KRISTIAN LIN
Set in the Eternal City, Woody Allen’s latest comedy, To Rome With Love, is a ragged but not unenjoyable piece that feels like something the filmmaker tossed off on his vacation. Given how prolific Woody Allen is, it’s mira...
A Fourth Ice Age
The series remorselessly drags on with no end in sight.KRISTIAN LIN
If you buy a ticket to see Ice Age: Continental Drift, you will see a lovely, clever, surprisingly moving animated film that ends in deeply satisfying fashion. Unfortunately, that movie isn’t the fourth installment of the Ice...
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. ...