Despite the title, you won’t find any Devo on Whip It’s soundtrack, but the Ramones and .38 Special both make vocal appearances in this film that marks the directorial debut of Drew Barrymore. If these bands made the journey from Drew’s iPod to the big screen, more power to them, as they’re certainly in tune with the rock & roll aesthetic on display throughout this rowdy, rebellious film. Read more.
By Matt Brunson
Clunky football metaphors are never out of season, so even though the NFL turned off its scoreboards earlier this winter, along comes Watchmen to inspire a gridiron grasp — namely, that director Zack Snyder is the cinematic equivalent of the quarterback who’s clearly no MVP but is just good enough to get his team to the Super Bowl.
In bringing (along with co-scripters David Hayter and Alex Tse) the sacred graphic novel by writer Alan Moore and illustrator Dave Gibbons to the big screen, Snyder makes almost all the right plays — the movie is visually resplendent and remarkably faithful to the source material — but too often fails to find the heart buried deep within the darkness. With the surprisingly adept Dawn of the Dead remake, the bloated fanboy fave 300 and now Watchmen, Snyder demonstrates that he knows his way around expensive movie equipment, but he hasn’t shown much affinity for his fellow humans. It’s no coincidence that the worst scene in Watchmen is the one in which superheroes Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson) and Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman) engage in hot and heavy sex. As staged, the sequence is completely risible; I’ve seen ’80s teen sex comedies less awkward than Snyder’s attempt at conveying intimacy through intercourse.
Read the rest of Matt’s review here.
Watch the movie trailer here:
The last time Will Smith teamed up with director Gabriele Muccino, the result was the box office smash The Pursuit of Happyness. With their latest collaboration, it seems as if the pair were engaged in the pursuit of crappyness. Read more…
No one can really blame Jim Carrey for returning to the same spastic well time after time. When the actor attempts to stretch, as in the woefully underrated Man on the Moon or the time-wasting The Number 23, audiences usually stay away in droves. So, yes, Yes Man finds the elastic comic working a variation on his patented routine from such hits as Bruce Almighty and Liar, Liar. The difference here is that there’s a winning romance to go along with his hyperactivity — for once, he’s as sweet as he is sweaty. Read more….
Read the review here.
Read the review here.
Read the review here.
