Category Archives: Movie Review

“A.C.O.D.”: Breaking up is hard to do with a straight face

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A.C.O.D. opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. R, 1:27, three stars out of four.

“A.C.O.D.” is a movie that might properly described as “sitcommy,” although that speaks less to problems with the movie than just how good sitcoms are these days. With sharp writing and acting, including two of the stars of “Parks and Recreation,” “A.C.O.D.” (“Adult Child of Divorce”) is in the tradition of everything from “I Love Lucy” to “Modern Family,” an amusing collision between insufferable people and those who try to suffer them. It’s more a situation than a story, but a pretty funny situation.

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“Our Children”: A young mother suffocates under her family

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“Our Children” has its Madison premiere at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, 227 State St., as part of its Spotlight Cinema series. Not rated, 1:51, three stars out of four.

“Our Children” opens in the aftermath of a horrifying event, one of those unspeakable tragedies that we hear about on cable news and come away a little more convinced that there must be evil in the world. Writer-director Joachim Lafosse gives us a sense of the what, and then the rest of “Our Children” goes back in time to show us the how and, as much as it can be possible to understand, the why.

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“Best Man Down”: Grooming Tyler Labine for better things

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“Best Man Down” is now streaming on VOD and is available for purchase on ITunes. PG-13, 1:31, two stars out of four.

When your film’s most compelling character dies in the first five minutes, your film has a problem. Writer-director Ted Koland’s debut comedy-drama “Best Man Down” has that problem. And a few others.

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“Captain Phillips”: It’s not just the camera that shakes you up

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“Captain Phillips” opens Friday at Point, Eastgate, Star Cinema and Sundance. PG-13, 2:14, three and a half stars out of four.

The handheld shooting style of director Paul Greengrass can be a mixed blessing; in films like “United 93” and “Bloody Sunday,” Greengrass can put the viewer right in the middle of chaos with a you-are-there immediacy. But in more conventional films like “Green Zone,” his restless style can seem more like an affectation than an asset.

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Instant Gratification: “Room 237” and four other good movies available now on Netflix Instant

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Pick of the week: “Room 237“: My full review is here.  Rodney Ascher’s playful and engrossing documentary is a love letter and a warning to film obsessives, as we watch “The Shining” through the eyes of five cinephiles with increasingly bizarre theories on the film’s “true” meaning. (Unfortunately, “The Shining” is not on Netflix.)

Crime film of the week: “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels“: Ah, I miss the days when Guy “Sherlock Holmes” Ritchie used to make movies like this, profane, twisty, fun crime films, in this case following several roughneck parties who collide over a pair of antique shotguns.

Action film of the week: “The Italian Job”: Not the Michael Caine original, but the American remake starring Mark Wahlberg, which is a pretty good heist film in its own right that makes good use of those Mini Coopers.

Comedy of the week: “The Last Days of Disco”: Whit Stillman’s 1998 film is a sly comedy of manners in the age of the Bee Gees, starring Kate Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny.

Foreign film of the week: “Starbuck”: My full review is here. This French-Canadian film (which will be remade as “The Delivery Man” with Vince Vaughn in November) follows a middle-aged screw-up who finds that his sperm donations have resulted in him fathering over 500 children.

 

“The Lesser Blessed”: Trudging along familiar terrain in the Northwest Territories

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“The Lesser Blessed” screens Monday through Thursday at Point and Eastgate Cinemas. R, 1:30, two stars out of four.

Larry’s back and chest are covered in a network of ugly burn scars, his skin surface resembling the bleak landscapes of the Northwest Territories village where the First Nations teenager lives. And it also resembles the scars on his psychic landscape as well.

Writer-director Anita Doron’s well-acted but derivative coming-of-age drama, based on Richard van Camp’s young adult novel, makes the most of its unfamiliar setting, but is very familiar when it comes to its characters and plot points.

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“Parkland”: Viewing Nov. 22, 1963 from the sidelines

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“Parkland” opens Friday at Star Cinema and Sundance. PG-13, 1:33, three stars out of four.

You can tell “Parkland” was made by a journalist. Good journalists hunt for telling moments in a story, details that even the subjects might not think are important, but that illuminate matters from an unexpected angle.

“Parkland” is full of such moments. Written and directed by journalist Peter Landesman, based closely on Vincent Bugliosi’s massive work of nonfiction “Four Days in November,” the film dramatizes the events of Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

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“Gravity”: Still want to be an astronaut when you grow up, Susie?

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“Gravity” opens Friday at Point, Eastgate, Star Cinema and Sundance. PG-13, 1:31, four stars out of four.

Below, the Earth slowly turns, lovely and unreachable. Above, an inky void of nothingness beckons. For 90 minutes Alfonso Cuaron’s “Gravity” suspends its characters between the two, building unbearable tension in a tale of survival at 366,000 feet.

There are quibbles to  be made about some of the more pedestrian aspects of “Gravity” — the characters are a little simply drawn, the dialogue sometimes too on the nose. But as an experience of pure cinema, an appreciation of its ability to show terrible and wonderful things, I can’t think of its equal in 2013.

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“Short Term 12”: Working with at-risk teens, and taking your work home with you

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“Short Term 12” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. R, 1:36, three and a half stars out of four.

“Short Term 12” opens and closes with scenes that could be mirror images of each other, of a troubled teen attempting to escape his group home while his minders chase after him. The first time it’s played as tense drama, the second as almost uplifting comedy.

Same scenario, same characters. But writer-director Destin Daniel Cretton changes enough details to make the two scenes feel utterly different. And, more significantly, by the last scene we’ve spent so much time with these counselors and their charges, grown to love and worry for them, that our perspective is really what’s changed.

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