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Drama
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) Movie Review
Give this much to Oliver Stone: His movies are never boring.
And, somewhere within the overstuffed blend of agitprop and melodrama that is “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” there lies a lean cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked capitalism – as if the reality of the actual Wall Street weren’t example enough.
But Stone is never content to just make one movie; he always makes several, then squeezes them all together into one engorged package, chockablock with…
The American (2010)
George Clooney returns, setting aside the warm and witty persona that his fans love, and giving them instead one of his darkest and most unsympathetic characters: an ice-cold professional killer marooned in loneliness and fear. The director is Anton Corbijn – the former photographer who made his brilliant feature debut with Control, a biopic of Joy Division’s frontman, Ian Curtis – working from a screenplay by Rowan Joffe. It is adapted from the 1991 novel A Very Private Gentleman by…
The Switch (2010)
When I heard about The Switch, a romantic comedy starring Jennifer Aniston as a Manhattan singleton who decides to get pregnant on her own, I confess that I had no desire to see it. I’d already been through Jennifer Lopez in The Back-Up Plan, and frankly, one screwball sperm-donor chick flick per year seemed more than enough. But The Switch is a pleasant surprise. It’s a by-the-numbers movie, but the dots that get connected feel new. Aniston, playing a forward-thinking…
Sex and the City 2 (2010)
Carrie has finally snagged Big, but misses the excitement of evenings out on the town. Charlotte’s worried that husband Harry is smitten with the new and very bra-less nanny. Samantha’s overdoing pills and ointments to stave off the menopause. Miranda’s packed in her job because she can’t hear her own voice at work.
In short, they’re all getting older, and developing a new set of neuroses to cultivate between their continued shopping frenzies.
“Neuroses” is a heavy way of putting…
The Runaways (2010)
The Monkees were cobbled together in the Sixties as America’s answer to the Beatles and plonked in a zany television sitcom; yet the songs – perky, infectious, intricately-crafted – were actually quite good. As cartoon characters, the Archies were even less “real”, but Sugar, Sugar, their worldwide hit of 1969, is two minutes and 48 seconds of pure pop.
A few years later came a confection rather less wholesome but just as mouth-watering – the Runaways. The first all-girl rock-and-roll…
Clash of the Titans (2010)
A remake of the 1981 cult classic of the same name, Clash of the Titans follows demi-god Perseus (Sam Worthington) as he seeks revenge against the gods after the death of his family. His quest will see him embark on a grand adventure where he must battle many fantastic and horrifying creatures in order to rescue Princess Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) and the doomed city of Argos from the wrath of the gods. That’s the story in a nutshell. Many characters…
Green Zone (2010)
Iraq has not been, in any sense, good box-office. Even Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar-feted The Hurt Locker struggled to pull in the crowds when it was first released – and that’s not to mention the slew of soapboxy dramas (In the Valley of Elah, Stop-Loss, Redacted) whose messages fell largely on deaf ears. Reuniting the director and star of the last decade’s savviest action franchise, Green Zone hopes to break that pattern, and its method is simple. “Bourne goes Epic!”, boom…
Shutter Island (2010)
Martin Scorsese’s new movie is a tale of sound and fury, signifying … well, not nothing exactly, but a heck of a lot less than it promises, given the straining intensity of those performances, the glowering darkness of mood, the grand gesture at 20th-century history’s grimmest nightmares, and the sheer length. This was supposed to be Scorsese’s experiment in B-movie thrills, but no mere B-movie director would go on for two hours and 20 minutes. That’s an auteur running time…
Dear John (2010)
There is nothing misleading about a film based on a Nicholas Sparks novel. For the past decade, titles like The Notebook, A Walk to Remember, Nights in Rodanthe and Message in a Bottle unabashedly wielded the looks of love (and two more of his novels are in studio development). The trend continues with Dear John, a romantic tale of love found, love lost and love stupidly misplaced. It starts off well enough, however, and one character in particular stands out.…
Extraordinary Measures (2010)
Extraordinary Measures, a movie about a medical breakthrough, is not especially eager to break new ground of its own. Directed with care and competence by Tom Vaughan (“What Happens in Vegas”), the film hews closely to familiar themes and patterns. One strand is a drama about a family in crisis, with parents facing the illness and possible death of two of their children, who suffer from a fatal genetic disorder. Another piece is a buddy picture, in which a mismatched…
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