Film.com Movie Reviews
The latest movie reviews from Film.com.
Review: Going the Distance Proves Worthy of a Cuddle
"The long distance aspect was interesting, accurate, and mined for maximum comic effect."
The Muppets Take Manhattan said it best. "Peoples is peoples." Truer words were never spoken, and this is the same level of lesson Going the Distance seeks and discovers throughout its generally hilarious running time. If
Justin Long or
Drew Barrymore were to re-create the speech it would go something like "relationships are relationships." And they are. You can't argue that. Relationships…
Review: Machete Plays to its Strengths
"An enthusiastic and affectionate exploitation flick."
In some ways,
Machete is what The Expendables would have been if The Expendables had been written and directed by someone with a sense of humor, i.e., not Sylvester Stallone. Both films are self-conscious throwbacks to bygone genres; part of the problem with Stallone's movie is that it wasn't self-conscious enough. I loved what Anthony Lane said about it in the New Yorker: "You might expect, given the title, a few shafts of…
Review: The Girl Who Played With Fire Sizzles
"Brings the dramatic sizzle."
If watching
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo made you fall in love with Goth heroine Lisbeth Salander, the Swedish sequel,
The Girl Who Played With Fire (Flicken some lekte med elden) will deepen the relationship.
It rounds up the usual suspects and key actors, including Michael Nyqvist as Michael Blomkvist and Noomi Rapace as Salander, plus some fresh faces. While the first film introduced audiences to the 20-something antisocial computer-hacker…
Review: The American is Too Quiet
"The film could have added up to something substantial ..."
The American may be the most deceiving title of the year. Made by a Dutch director, set in Italy, and featuring loads of European sensuality paired with a very non-American sense of guilt over violence -- this is a film that would have been better off calling itself The UnAmerican. Or The Not Very American. Of course, none of this is a dealbreaker, and the film still could have added up to something substantial with…
Review: Last Exorcism Is a Hell of a Good Time
"A tense and generally understated chiller that might creep you right the hell out."
More than 35 years -- half a lifetime! -- have passed since The Exorcist and horror movies about casting the devil out of people have become quaint. So it's nice to see a little jolt put back in the old formula with The Last Exorcism, a tense and generally understated chiller that might creep you right the hell out.
It's presented as a fake documentary (speaking of quaint movie premises) about…
Review: Takers Won't Take Home Any Awards
"If chic criminals are enough to satisfy your cinema craving, it might be worth a bucket of movie popcorn."
Takers is a popcorn movie that might make you feel guilty about eating movie popcorn. Or at least motivate men to pump up their paunch or get a GQ makeover. Ladies, you'll wish your guy would do both.
The "Takers" in this high-octane heist film are suave, sexy, young, smooth criminals who strut down L.A. streets in expensive suits and screech away from robberies in their…
Review: Piranha 3-D Mixes Blood, Bikinis, and Laughs
"Completely over-the-top."
When you set out to make a movie about a swarm of killer prehistoric piranhas, your tongue better be placed firmly in cheek -- otherwise the results could be disastrous, because let's face it: No one can say "killer prehistoric piranhas" without cracking a smile. Lucky for us, director
Alexandre Aja got the joke with
Piranha 3-D, a killer piranha movie that takes a bite out of "serious" monster movies (i.e.,
Jaws) by going completely over-the-top,…
Review: To No One's Surprise, Vampires Suck Isn't Funny
"An awful lot of the gags are related to punching someone."
In Vampires Suck, the Twilight spoof by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, the Bella character points out the Cullen family and asks a classmate about them. The classmate says:
Their skin is ice-cold, they feed on human flesh, and they all sleep in coffins. Maybe they're Canadian.
In
my own Twilight parody script, widely disseminated on the Internetz in 2008, the classmate in the same situation says:
They avoid direct…
Review: The Switch Is Tastier Than It Could Have Been
"Can hold its head high among the other summer comedies."
For a movie with such a distasteful premise, The Switch is refreshingly funny and surprisingly sweet. It's about a man whose platonic lady friend is being artificially inseminated, who secretly replaces the donor's contribution with his own, resulting in a child that is unmistakably his. Hmm. Now I begin to regret using the words "distasteful" and "sweet."
Written by Allan Loeb (21) and based on a Jeffrey Eugenides short…
