Category Archives: Movie Review

“Blue is the Warmest Color”: A love story that, flaws and all, isn’t easily forgotten

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“Blue is the Warmest Color” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. Not rated, 2:55, three and a half stars out of four.

“Blue is the Warmest Color” is a beautifully imperfect film about a beautifully imperfect love affair. Abdellatif Kechiche’s Cannes Film Festival winner has been on the receiving end of both rapturous praise and brutal criticism since it premiered in May — either it’s the best French love story since “Breathless” or it’s anti-feminist pornography masquerading as an arthouse epic. I’ve wrestled with both extremes in the few days since I’ve seen it, and I’m wrestling still. But I know there are moments of great tenderness and artistry here, especially in the performance, that make me think the missteps were at least honorably made.

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“Afternoon Delight:” Down and out in Silver Lake

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“Afternoon Delight” screens Thursday, Nov. 14 at 7 p.m. at the Union South Marquee Theatre, 1208 W. Regent St., and writer-director Jill Soloway, a UW-Madison graduate, will introduce the film and take part in a post-show Q&A. R, 1:39, three and a half stars out of four.

For women (and men) of a certain age, there are many wince-worthy moments to be had in writer-director Jill Soloway’s “Afternoon Delight.” In her feature film debut, Soloway absolutely nails the rhythms and conversations of upper middle class parenting, the endless series of playdates and charity auctions and girls’ nights out that must be navigated just right, preferably by Evite and Facebook.

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“Thor: The Dark World”: If I had a hammer . . .

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“Thor: The Dark World” opens Friday at Point, Eastgate and Star Cinema. PG-13, 1:52, two stars out of four.

Man, the screenwriters of “Thor: The Dark World” must look back with envy on the writers of the first “Iron Man” movie. Times were simpler back then — there wasn’t this whole interconnected Marvel cinematic universe of cameos and post-credit sequences and overlapping plots to pay fealty to. There’s much talk in “The Dark World” of the Nine Realms all coming into alignment for the first time in 5,000 years, but that’s nothing — try and keep nine superhero franchises lined up.

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“About Time”: It’s time travel, actually

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“About Time” opens Friday at Point, Eastgate and Star Cinema. R, 2:03, three stars out of four.

The moment of truth comes early on in writer-director Richard Curtis’ “About Time.” Is he going to be able to sell the audience on the film’s central conceit, that a father (Bill Nighy) and son (Domhnall Gleeson) can travel through time?

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“Let the Fire Burn”: Tempers flare, and Philadelphia burns

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“Let the Fire Burn” screens at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 7, at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art as part of its Spotlight Cinema series. Not rated, 1:35, three and a half stars out of four.

Jason Osder’s documentary “Let the Fire Burn” opens with what looks like some kind of natural disaster, a massive inferno that engulfed a Philadelphia neighborhood in 1985, destroying 61 homes and killing 11 people, five of them children.

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“Ender’s Game”: A children’s crusade in outer space

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“Ender’s Game” opens Friday in Madison at Point, Eastgate, Star Cinema and Cinema Cafe. PG-13, 1:54, three stars out of four.

“Children in the flower of youth,
Heart in heart, and hand in hand,
Ignorant of what helps or harms,
Without armor, without arms,
Journeying to the Holy Land!”

–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Children’s Crusade”

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“Big Sur”: Life off the road for an older, sadder Jack Kerouac

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“Big Sur” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. R, 1:21, three stars out of four.

Think of “Big Sur” as the counterpoint to Walter Salles’ fevered, rapturous adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” that came earlier this year. Salles’ movie mythologizes Kerouac’s book (and the real-life characters and events that inspired it), as much about the book’s impact on the world as the book itself.

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“Mr. Nobody”: A heady sci-fi Choose Your Own Adventure

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“Mr. Nobody” is now available on video-on-demand and for rent on Amazon and iTunes. It opens theatrically in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, November 1. A Madison date has not yet been set. R, 2:28, two and a half stars out of four.

Think of “Mr. Nobody” as a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book for grown-ups, but read straight through as if it were any other book, so the reader keeps skipping across alternate storylines. On Page 28, the hero gets eaten by a dragon; on Page 29, he’s alive again, having decided not to go into the dragon’s cave after all.

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“Museum Hours”: When the paintings look back at you

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“Museum Hours” screens at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. Free for members; $7 at the door for everyone else. Not rated, 1:46, three and a half stars out of four.

It’s fitting, of course, that a film called “Museum Hours” would screen at a museum, although the classical paintings in Jem Cohen’s film would stick out like a sore thumb among MMoCA’s more contemporary pieces. Still, the film captures the contemplative feeling of whiling away a couple of hours among some of the world’s great works of art, especially in the company of a couple of engaging, droll guides.

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