Posts Tagged ‘film reviews’
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...
Monsieur Lazhar: Bonjour, Classe
This Canadian school drama is smart but too well-behaved.KRISTIAN LIN
The French-Canadian drama Monsieur Lazhar was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film this past year, and there were observers who tipped the movie to take home the statuette. It wound up losing to A Separation, ...
Reactor Reanimation
Chernobyl Diaries has a lot going for it — except the movie itself.MATTHEW MCGOWAN
Chernobyl Diaries has all the makings of a great horror movie: a wholly original and sinister setting, engaging historical backstory, creepy Eastern European dudes everywhere, zombie-like beings lurking in the shadows, cleavage...
Film Shorts
KRISTIAN LINOPENING: Chernobyl Diaries (R) Jesse McCartney stars in this horror film as one of six tourists who hire a local tour guide (Dmitri Diatchenko) to take them to a Ukrainian city abandoned after the nuclear plant’s meltdown. Al...
Film Shorts
KRISTIAN LINOPENING: Bernie (PG-13) Based on a real-life murder case, Richard Linklater’s film stars Jack Black as a small-town Texas mortician who kills a wealthy widow (Shirley MacLaine) for her money and then tries to keep up the pret...
Girl in Progress: All About My Mother
This Latin family saga wins a recommendation by default.KRISTIAN LIN
And still no one has discovered a reliable way to draw Latino audiences to movie theaters the way Tyler Perry has been able to draw African-American audiences. Maybe that’s a good thing; I’d rather have a few earnest dramas...
Oscar Worthy?
Disney’s latest nature doc, Chimpanzee is high on monkey business but short on appeal.STEVE STEWARD
When two British vets of nature documentaries, one of whom was the executive producer on the landmark films The Blue Planet and Planet Earth, collaborate on a project, nature lovers are prone to salivate in anticipation like hy...
Film Shorts
KRISTIAN LINOPENING: Bully (PG-13) Re-rated after an exhaustive saga with the MPAA, Lee Hirsch’s documentary examines bullying in schools across America. (Opens Friday) Keyhole (R) The latest film by Canadian avant-garde filmmaker Guy Ma...
Film Shorts
KRISTIAN LINOPENING: The FP (R) Brandon and Jason Trost’s black comedy is about two rival street gangs who stage lethal turf battles with each other by playing a dance video game. Starring Jason Trost, Lee Valmassy, Art Hsu, Caker Folley...
Hunger Games: Girl on Fire
Suzanne Collins’ dystopian novel becomes a bruising sci-fi thriller.KRISTIAN LIN
When it comes to adapting Suzanne Collins’ novel The Hunger Games to film, the big challenge is that the book is so many different things at once. It’s an action thriller, a dystopian exercise, a social commentary on pop cu...