Review
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The Playlist5 commentslike0tweet0
Review: Seann William Scott's 'American Loser' Fails To Make Sense Of A Fractured Life
There’s a vague sense of cruelty to the direct-to-DVD market, which is used to solely accommodate cheap genre products, but more often seems like a dumping ground for unusual niche projects that die a slow death on the festival circuit. They usually get treated much like the aptly titled “American Loser,” a dramatic half-comedy with Seann William Scott that went through a number of title changes before being dumped onto the market. The film now carries a title that not only insults the lead character, and by extension Scott (who has experimented a few times in risky projects that ended up with negligible releases), but it cravenly attempts to...
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The Playlist5 commentslike0tweet0
Review: 'The Mill And The Cross' Is A Sumptuous Visual Feast
Unlike a film, a book, or a television song, a painting has infinite life. The artist weaves his narrative with a brush, his work not a mimicry but an impression of a time that comes and goes. It’s this eternal life that enlivens “The Mill and the Cross,” a biography not of a person, but of “The Way...
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The Playlist3 commentslike0tweet0
Review: Too Meta 'Human Centipede Part 2' Almost Reaches The All-Time Gross-Out Pantheon
Is Tom Six a filmmaker? Is Tom Six a storyteller? No, at this point, you’ll have to conclude he is neither of these things. What he is represents something maybe more honest, more pure: he’s a provocateur. In making “The Human Centipede: First Sequence,” Six took a memorably deranged subject of medi...
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Review: 'Puncture' With Chris Evans A True Story Weighed Down By Oscar Reel Antics
The following is a reprint of our review from the Tribeca Film Festival.
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The Playlist18 commentslike0tweet0
Review: A Brooding, Wooden Taylor Lautner Muddles His Way Through The Nonsensical 'Abduction'
In the future (it’s closer than you think!), celebrities will be an even bigger part of our society. While the pool of “famous people” will expand beyond movie stars, politicians and random public figures, we’ll find ourselves consumed by the public’s thirst for all things mega-famous. In this future, somewhere, someone will write a massive tome dedicated to the forehead of Taylor Lautner. Like the Monolith in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” it is massive, and says everything and nothing. It sits on top of the scrunched up Zardoz-of-a-face that is this curious manchild, at once Cro-Magnon and, yet, every bit representative of his teenage years. It's...
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Review: The Politics Of Sex Are Explored In 'Weekend'
The following is a reprint of our review from SXSW.
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Review: 'Machine Gun Preacher' Is Essentially A Botched 'Rambo'
The following is a reprint of our review that ran during the 2011 Toronto Film Festival.
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The Playlist7 commentslike1tweet0
Review: 'Dolphin Tale' Is A Thoroughly Average, Squeaky Clean Family Movie
In the new, squeaky clean family film "Dolphin Tale," based on the true story of an injured dolphin that is outfitted with a cutting edge prosthetic tail, there are enough civic and spiritual virtues levelled at you to fill several Sunday school classes. The importance of family, friendship, never leaving someone behind, accepting those with disabilities, respecting the ocean, and studying hard in class, are reiterated repeatedly, so much so that you suspect this may be a sly "Christian values" movie dressed up like an eco-friendly Saturday afternoon romp (it does come from the same people who made "The Blind Side" so keep that in mind). But ...
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The Playlist2 commentslike0tweet0
Review: 'Toast' With Freddie Highmore Is Burnt, Charred & Flavorless
To adapt a story into a movie is to lionize the subject, say some critics. It’s the same school of thought that believes you can’t ever make an anti-war movie. To that end, some would say, in a Warholian manner, that every person deserves their own movie, for such a designation would suggest a human...
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Review: Cameron Crowe's 'Pearl Jam Twenty' Is A Rousing, Wonderfully Atypical Rock Doc
If it's not completely obvious, "Pearl Jam Twenty" is the name of the new retrospective documentary about the first twenty years of influential Seattle rock band Pearl Jam. But, as directed by Cameron Crowe, whose mind operates on another level of meta-textual cross-indexed pop cultural awareness, it's also a nod to the name of the first Pearl Jam album, Ten (the number of former New Jersey Nets point guard Mookie Blaylock, who the band was originally named after). In a weird way, the title is also evocative of the way the movie has been put together – unlike most standard rock band documentaries, its full of personal detail (Crowe was in Sea...
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