Documentary dishes on food serviceAmerica’s most famous tough-love arts teacher is probably Ms. Grant, the dance instructor Debbie Allen played in “Fame.’’ But I really wouldn’t want to see what Wilma Stephenson would do to her. Stephenson is the culinary arts instructor at Frankford High School in Northeast Philadelphia and the core of Mark Becker and Jennifer Grausman’s “Pressure Cooker,’’ a very entertaining documentary ...
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Two in the WaveEmmanuel Laurent named his documentary about Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard “Two in the Wave.’’ It quite easily could have been called “Le Divorce.’’ The film provides a history of the soured friendship between the most famous filmmakers of the French New Wave. In doing so, Laurent and the film’s writer and narrator, the film critic Antoine de Baecque, imagine ...
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Going the DistanceAmerican movies can always be counted on to get some things wrong about everyday life: brushing teeth, telephones, kissing, but mostly and especially talking about sex. The line is fine between an honest conversation about sex and plain old dirty talk. There are, in fact, so few constructive conversations about procedure, preference, and pleasure that it’s possible to spend a ...
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The AmericanYou can tell “The American’’ is an adult European thriller. Most of the killing is done in sport coats, the rest in an anorak. All of it involves George Clooney. This is a part that requires him to dress characteristically well (his clothes are by Ermenegildo Zegna), but while looking hung-dry rather than dry-cleaned. The movie makes up for his ...
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CenturionYou want a movie in which starving second-century Romans dine on the contents of a dead elk’s stomach to be equally ravenous. But “Centurion,’’ a chase film written and directed by Neil Marshall, is a tame venture. Oh, there is blood and gore. Flaming arrows, spears, and knives have no problem finding their way to the back of a mouth. ...
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Soul Kitchen‘Tis the summer for dining vicariously. At the moment, Julia Roberts is ingesting her way out of a pair of designer jeans in “Eat Pray Love,’’ and if Tilda Swinton had wound up looking pregnant at the end of “I Am Love,’’ the culprit wouldn’t have been the chef she’s sleeping with but the prawns he cooked her. But for ...
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Still king of the worldBecause it hasn’t dominated the world enough, James Cameron’s “Avatar’’ returns to theaters this week. The new version has been “salted,’’ as Cameron put it in a recent telephone interview, with nine extra minutes, including “one big action sequence,’’ 20 or so seconds of physical congress between Jake and Neytiri (“no spoilers in your article, OK?’’), and “some strong dramatic ...
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Prepare to be disarmedEvery winter, People magazine releases its catalog of desire and fantasy also known as the Sexiest Man Alive edition. It’s the usual assortment of bedroom eyes and unbuttoned shirts. The editors pick a big winner, and staring at the recent covers — Jackman, Damon, Clooney, Pitt, Law . . . Clooney — you start to wonder: Have they met Idris ...
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Piranha 3DThe 3-D in “Piranha 3D’’ means that objects will float close to your face. Given how many of those objects are braless breasts, 3-D may as well be a new cup size. (The fake ones go nicely with the plastic glasses.) The most fun to be had comes courtesy of the inevitable posses of boys in flip-flops, cargo shorts, baseball ...
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Patrik, Age 1.5On the surface, “Patrik, Age 1.5,’’ from Sweden, is basic situation comedy. A gay married couple wants to adopt a toddler. They wind up with a homophobic teenager. It’s not a sitcom, but the movie has a few unexpected developments. Göran (Gustaf Skarsgard) has always wanted a child to go with his suburban home. But Sven (Torkel Petersson) was heterosexually ...
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Mao's Last Dancer‘Mao’s Last Dancer’’ is historical ballet camp. The movie tells the story of Li Cunxin, but portraits of Mao get as many close-ups as the actors. Li was plucked from his family as a boy and arduously turned into a star, courtesy of Madame Mao’s Beijing Dance Academy. He was plucked again from China and placed in the Houston Ballet ...
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Cairo TimeIn “Cairo Time,’’ Patricia Clarkson has the face of a woman who just ate a long, delicious meal or cashed a very big check. She plays an American tourist named Juliette and looks expectant and acutely satisfied. It’s an apt expression for a movie that requires her to wander around northern Egypt in layers of fabric and fall deeply in ...
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The SwitchThe romantic comedy has never had a star as depressing as Jennifer Aniston. It’s not the movies — well, it isn’t simply the movies. “Picture Perfect,’’ “The Object of My Affection,’’ “Along Came Polly,’’ “Rumor Has It,’’ “Management,’’ “The Bounty Hunter’’: This is in-flight entertainment grating enough to send more than a fed-up flight attendant shrieking down an inflatable slide.
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Roberts the perfect poster childOne of the problems with current movie posters is that they’re terrible. They often sell movies I often want to see. The design appears to be following a lot of marketing directives that produce posters cobbled from kits. Oddly, the most imaginative posters now are for horror films. The art for the “Saw’’ franchise, for instance, outpaces the movies themselves. ...
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The Wildest Dream: Conquest of EverestA title like “The Wildest Dream: Conquest of Everest’’ implies that Everest can’t conquer you. In fact, the reason for this documentary is that Englishmen George Mallory and Sandy Irvine tried to reach Everest’s summit in 1924 and were never again seen alive. The mountain has usually won. But this film stresses an arduous trek that dares to beat the ...
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Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and RebelDoes Hugh Hefner own a pair of jeans? It’s a question that misses the point of the Hefner experience. But it’s the sort of thing you leave Brigitte Berman’s fawning new Hefner documentary wondering. He sits around “Hugh Hefner: Playboy , Activist and Rebel’’ in his famous silk robe and pajamas and explains all the good he’s done for the ...
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Eat Pray LoveThere has been some debate about what to call “Eat Pray Love.’’ Is it a romantic comedy? Is it a chick flick? This is silly, since, in truth, it’s neither. It’s simply a Julia Roberts movie, often a lovely one. As Sylvester Stallone clings to relevance in “The Expendables,’’ how shocking to see this 42-old-year woman work at the height ...
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The Other GuysIt was depressing watching Mark Wahlberg pretend to be awake for the gunfights and explosions in “Max Payne.’’ It was excruciating to see him look so overmedicated in “The Lovely Bones.’’ And it was absolutely inhumane to make us watch him talk to plants in “The Happening.’’ The only upside was a couple of very funny “Saturday Night Live’’ sketches ...
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Best Worst Movie‘Best Worst Movie,’’ a documentary about the glorious, legendary badness of “Troll 2,’’ should make you smile. Once upon a time, “Troll 2’’ appeared at the top of the bottom 100 movies on the Internet Movie Database (it’s plummeted to 64). The documentary’s director, Michael Paul Stephenson, played the freckled, flaxen-haired son in the film, which was shot in 1989, ...
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The Concert‘The Concert’’ could just have been some sanctimonious exercise in sentimentality. Any time anti-Semitism, Soviet communism, and Tchaikovsky come together, Kleenex and a foreign-language Oscar can’t be far behind. But even though the grand finale is not without some arm-twisting, “The Concert’’ is a passable, sometimes skillful farce. Once upon a time, Andrei Filipov (Alexei Guskov) conducted the Bolshoi Orchestra. ...
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KissesIn “Kisses,’’ Kylie (Kelly O’Neill) and Dylan (Shane Curry) live next door to each other. They wind up running away to Dublin together from their volatile suburban households. He’s not so sure it’s a good idea. But she disagrees: “After breaking the kitchen window and bursting them pipes — I’m gonna get reefed out too!’’ What the writer and director, ...
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Darkly perverse family traps their children and us‘In a month, your mother will be giving birth to two children and one dog,’’ drones the father to his children in “Dogtooth.’’ They return his announcement with a kind of neutered joy. This is mildly amusing, scarcely accurate news, sandwiched among scenes of incest, miseducation, and inhumanity that would shatter the SPCA’s heart. The cat looked innocent to me, ...
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Great DirectorsRarely have clips from so many good and great movies been put to such dull use. But “Great Directors’’ has no idea what to do with those images or the filmmakers who created them. In ponderous slow motion, sometimes in pretentious black-and-white, first-time writer-director Angela Ismailos makes her way around the world. Her goal is to interview her favorite directors, ...
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Countdown to ZeroTired of action heroes saving the world, robbing you of the atomic annihilation sequence you’d been secretly dying to see? “Countdown to Zero,’’ an earnest, alarmist new docu-plea for nuclear disarmament, concludes with an orgy of such destruction. Mushroom clouds. Infernal white light. Obliterating energy blasts. It’s all here, and mostly beyond the pale.
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Charlie St. CloudZac Efron is 22, but he already has that onset George Hamilton glow. Which is perfect for “Charlie St. Cloud,’’ a movie about a young sailing champion who angelically postpones his life to play catch with his dead, Red Sox -crazed, 11-year-old brother, Sam (Charlie Tahan). In limbo. Every day.
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Everyone ElseIn “Everyone Else,’’ a German couple languishes at a villa in Sardinia. They’re on vacation, and they appear to be happy together, except when they aren’t. The film is part breakup movie, part romantic getaway. When it’s which depends solely on personal temperament.
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Phyllis and HaroldCindy Kleine’s documentary about her parents is called “Phyllis and Harold,’’ but ultimately it’s about Phyllis. How for years she kept secrets from Harold, how she was a kind of reluctant mother, how she enlisted her elder daughter — Kleine’s sister, Ricky — to maintain those secrets. The film isn’t a take-down. It’s a fascinating plea, on Kleine’s part, to ...
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SaltWatching Angelina Jolie slice, dice, kick, jump, shoot, run, and blow stuff up, all while camera-ready has its moments. The idea of a 110-pound action star with ropy arms, Claes Oldenburg lips, and a bosom Roger Corman would love made sense only on the pages of a comic book. But Jolie operates in ridiculous defiance of physics. In “Salt,’’ she ...
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Rachel getting variedOnce upon a time, modern actresses got to play the great women of the ages in big epics. Elizabeth Taylor was Cleopatra. Anne Baxter was Nefretiri. Katharine Hepburn was Eleanor of Aquitaine. It doesn’t happen so much anymore. But this week the English actor Rachel Weisz nods to somewhat bygone Hollywood tradition. In Alejandro Amenabar’s “Agora,’’ which opens in the ...
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The LawWas there ever as ludicrously, unapologetically sexy a movie star as Gina Lollobrigida? She was the star of “The World’s Most Beautiful Woman,’’ but she wasn’t purely beautiful. Her carnality was a good test of how soon a man could turn into a dog. In 1959, not far from the apex of her international fame, La Lolla, as she was ...
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InceptionThe good news about Christopher Nolan is that he seems happy to have a break from the grand shadows of Gotham City. “Inception’’ looks as much like a blockbuster as “The Dark Knight.’’ It also feels like one. But it’s free of doom. For better and worse, it weighs nothing, which is not the same as saying it means nothing.
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The Sorcerer's ApprenticeThere’s no magic to speak of in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.’’ I mean, there’s the stuff that happens when an effects crew works to provide the impression of magic. At least once, Nicolas Cage waves his arms and Alfred Molina goes flying across a bathroom (why do so many action sequences involve urinals?), and the Merrill Lynch bull statue stampedes around ...
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