From Tad Friend’s New Yorker profile of Anna Faris (which Jezebel.com reblogged under the headline “Hollywood Insiders Admit Hollywood Hates Women”) to the glass-ceiling-shattering pressure assigned to last month’s Bridesmaids (which has thus far outgrossed every previous Judd Apatow project since Knocked Up), a case could be made that 2011…
It’s 10 minutes before a human character appears on-screen in Green Lantern, a personality-free franchise-launcher that builds toward a quaint, if explosive, argument in favor of the nebulous quality of “humanity.” Via a heavily CGI’d prologue, we learn that The Universe is patrolled by a group of fearless, multi-species warriors…
Tenacious indie Kelly Reichardt has specialized in quirky, minimalist quasi-road movies in which loners come unmoored in some great American space. Meek’s Cutoff is that and more — one great leap into the 19th-century unknown. The members of a small wagon train crossing the Oregon Trail in 1845 follow their…
A nebbishy screenwriter who longs to publish a novel, Gil (Owen Wilson) is tentatively working on a book set in a nostalgia shop — much to the open frustration of Inez (Rachel McAdams), his all-too-modern, rich-girl fiancée, who has a tendency to talk about him in catty, judgey tones as…
Bridesmaids is a high-profile test case. Directed by Paul Feig (a sitcom journeyman most lovingly known as the creator of Freaks and Geeks), it’s the first female-fronted comedy produced by Hollywood kingpin Judd Apatow, who has weathered criticism in the past for his brand’s dude-centric point of view. It’s also…
If Jane Eyre is not the greatest of the Great Books with a permanent position on required-reading lists, it may be the most frequently filmed: At least 10 cinematic versions of the story have been made dating back to the dawn of the silent era — more, if you count…
In Bourne Ultimatum screenwriter George Nolfi’s directorial debut (an extremely loose adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s 1954 short story “Adjustment Team”), Matt Damon plays David Norris, a Brooklyn-born, bar-fight-prone congressman rocketing to the front of a Senate race apparently on the strength of his charisma and the idealism of his…
Paramount, distributor of David O. Russell’s The Fighter, celebrated the helmer’s Best Director Oscar nomination by placing a “For Your Consideration” ad on the cover of Variety, touting him as “the comeback of the year.” It was an odd choice of phrasing, considering that The Fighter, Russell’s first feature to…
In Mike Cahill’s Another Earth — a multiple prize-winner at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and one of two titles movies OR titles (to avoid rep of “film”) co-written by and starring the festival’s biggest breakout, Brit Marling — both hope and anxiety follow the discovery of Earth 2, a…
The Sundance Film Festival, which ends January 30, self-identifies as a “discovery festival,” meaning that it embraces its own legend of being a place where, over the course of a single screening, an unknown can transform into an industry-redefining star — even as that fantasy seems increasingly out of date…
Tracking the parallel trajectories of three employees laid off from cushy corporate jobs at the same Boston-based manufacturing conglomerate, The Company Men is transparent in its ambition to capture The Way We Live Now from a sensitive, equitable — rather than a withering and satiric — point of view. Writer/director…
Ivan Reitman, master of the high-concept, big-budget Hollywood comedy (Ghostbusters, Dave) would seem an unlikely candidate to direct No Strings Attached, an extremely low-concept, low-key romantic comedy of contemporary sexual mores centered on the dating foibles of attractive nerds. Fully devoid of the fantasy contrivance that often sets a Reitman…
Another Year, the 10th feature-length British soap written and directed by Mike Leigh, concerns a year in the life of Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen), the happiest post-middle-aged married couple in the whole of the London suburbs. Heading into their fifth decade together, Tom and Gerri are healthy…
When the MPAA handed Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine an NC-17 rating this fall, cynics suggested that the so-called “kiss of death” was better publicity for the gently experimental marriage drama than anything famously crafty distributor Harvey Weinstein could buy. When the rating was reversed — downgraded to an R without…
Sofia Coppola had her 21st birthday party at the Chateau Marmont — a fact she had forgotten until Phil Pavel, the manager of the hotel, reminded her while she was there shooting her new film, Somewhere. It’s the first feature to be granted clearance to shoot extensively inside the rooms…
Every four years, the American people act en masse to send a message to the nation’s power brokers, and every four years, this vote is interpreted as a sign of the decline in taste, intelligence, and moral rectitude of the populace. Every four years, a Jackass movie opens at number…
“She doesn’t sing that way because she’s had it easy.” This is how Tess (Cher), the long-suffering owner of the nightclub at the center of Burlesque, defends her new star, Ali (Christina Aguilera), to the club’s jealous, deposed marquee attraction, Nikki (Kristen Bell). The same phrase could substitute as a…
In the climax of Morning Glory, Rachel McAdams is dressed in a flesh-colored, diaphanous cocktail dress, its halter top and tight bodice giving way to spilling tulle. This is the kind of dress a screen heroine wears when a slow-building love plot is coming to a head; it is the…
In Due Date, a skinny, scowly, and dryly self-referential Robert Downey Jr. meets a chubby, beardy, quasi-autistic Zach Galifianakis boarding a flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles. Downey Jr. plays Peter, a Bluetoothed architect with a very pregnant wife (Michelle Monaghan) waiting at home for him; Galifianakis’ Ethan is a…
Movie stars make a living peddling distinct, definable personalities. Edward Norton, a movie star who might have enjoyed the comparative anonymity of a character actor if not for the gossip-media market value of a few of his habits (an aggressive perfectionism that has earned him a “reputation” for “being difficult,”…
What is Catfish? That question is an implicit part of the film’s marketing campaign, which, with the tagline, “Don’t let anyone tell you what it is,” teases a big reveal. The answer depends on whom you ask. Shot on-the-fly by Ariel “Rel” Schulman and Henry Joost, the film chronicles an…
It was the best of TIFFs, it was the worst of TIFFs. While the trade pubs breathlessly trumpeted the flurry of deals that took place at the Toronto International Film Festival, an epidemic of grumbling had spread through press and industry screenings. Key complaints concerned the quality of the lineup…
