Film section: Metro Weekly magazine, Washington, DC newspaper

Son Dance

The documentary Prodigal Sons is not what you expect and not always easy to watch, but it's well worth your time

Published on March 10, 2010, 11:43pm

Sometimes things don't turn out the way you expect. Sometimes the high school quarterback grows up and transitions into a woman. Sometimes an orphan discovers that he's the grandson of movie stars. And sometimes a story of a high school reunion morphs into a touching tale of a family struggling to remain a family. Kimberly Reed, a filmmaker from New York, grew up as Paul McKerrow in Helena, Montana, star of the football team and voted most likely to succeed. ...[more]

Small Wonder

Tim Burton's take on the Alice tale has a few smatterings of visual splendor, but lacks compelling performances

Published on March 4, 2010, 2:50am

Once upon a time there was a young director named Tim Burton, and he created wonderfully bizarre and macabre worlds populated by a boy with scissors for hands and jack-o-lanterns that masquerade as Santa Claus. Then Tim met a girl named Alice, and all the wonder died. Okay, maybe it didn't die, but it certainly went away on a hiatus that lasted 109 minutes. A recent visit to the Tim Burton exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art' made a ...[more]

Easy Pickings

The 2010 Academy Awards will feature a parade of already-anointed winners and a bloated Best Picture category

Published on March 4, 2010, 2:47am

Most of the Oscar winners this year are sure-things. There, I did it. All of my Oscar picks for the year are cursed and I'm leaving myself wide open to ridicule and derision by declaring that the competition is over (if it really ever started). But seriously, the only drama surrounding the Oscars will fall to just one or two categories. The real suspense will be whether Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin can pull off the co-host thing (was Neil ...[more]

Mystery Man

Adapted from a novel by Robert Harris, Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer is a political thriller of the highest order

Published on February 24, 2010, 11:20pm

There are so many mysteries on the island that it feels like you're never going to get any answers. Is there a safe way off? Can the others be trusted? And are dead people really trying to speak to the living? Just when your head starts to spin, you remember that Ewan McGregor is a writer, not a detective, and you're watching The Ghost Writer, not Shutter Island. Or Lost. Yes, another island-based mystery. This time, instead of a trippy ...[more]

Mysterious Island

The payoff to Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island makes the increasingly frustrating build-up all seem worthwhile

Published on February 17, 2010, 10:26pm

There are so many mysteries on the island, it feels like you're never going to get any answers. Is there a way off the island? Can the others on the island be trusted? And are dead people really speaking to the living? Just when the questions make your head start to spin, you remember that Leonardo DiCaprio wasn't on a plane that crashed and you're not watching Lost, you're watching Shutter Island. And fortunately, by the conclusion of Shutter Island, ...[more]

Love Lies Bleeding

Flooded with useless star-power, Valentine's Day is a disjointed mess of tenuous links and uncanny coincidences

Published on February 10, 2010, 9:44pm

Cupid! Hey, Cupid! Come over here and shoot me. Right through my eye, please, because it would be less painful than having to watch Garry Marshall's latest confectionary concoction. Valentine's Day is already a manufactured holiday filled with cute rhymes in lacey cards, candied hearts that induce nausea, and flowers, flowers and more flowers. There's little need for another gag-inducing love-fest unless it's good. And Marshall's Valentine's Day is not. Valentine's Day is like the clown car of movies -- ...[more]

Broken Bones

Peter Jackson has no problem creating mind-boggling visuals and it's one of the reasons The Lovely Bones fails

Published on January 14, 2010, 2:02am

There's a sweetness to Alice Sebold's 2002 mega-bestseller The Lovely Bones that belies the story of a young girl's brutal rape and killing. That same sweetness, so magnificently captured on the page, is missing from Peter Jackson's film adaptation of Sebold's book. At the center of The Lovely Bones is Susie Salmon (Atonement's Saoirse Ronan), who will forever be 14, her age when a serial killer makes her his latest victim. Trapped between heaven and Earth, Susie witnesses how grief ...[more]

Hormonal Activity

Youth in Revolt is obsessed with sex, sex, sex, while Crazy Heart offers washed-up redemption, country style

Published on January 7, 2010, 2:48am

The average (sex) teenaged boy thinks (sex) about sex (sex) every seven seconds (sex). While this might be an old wives' tale, you wouldn't know it from Youth in Revolt. It's a quintessential coming of age story revolving around sex, sex and even more sex. Nick Twisp (Michael Cera) is an awkward teen who dreams of beautiful women and his insecure charm somehow makes him irresistible. Hard to imagine Cera in this role, right? When the boyfriend (The Hangover's Zach ...[more]

Sleuthing Around

Guy Ritchie's re-imagines Sherlock Holmes as an action property, complete with bloody fights and huge explosions

Published on December 24, 2009, 12:12pm

''Elementary, my dear Watson.'' If you just became indignant about the fact that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never wrote that famous line, you will likely not enjoy Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, because you will never get past the overhaul of the famous detective (Robert Downey Jr.) as an action star who jumps out of windows, wins fight club matches, defies death to rescue damsels in distress, and is even willing to practice a little dark magic if the case requires ...[more]

Singular Sensation

A Single Man is heartbreaking in its subject matter and uplifting in its beauty, while Nine is a messy adaptation

Published on December 24, 2009, 1:40am

Five minutes into A Single Man, fashion designer Tom Ford's directorial debut, you realize you're seeing art. At first it seems to be that highly esoteric, stylistic art meant to alienate and rise above the masses. Then the film morphs into art in its purest form. For here is a visionary creating his masterpiece and making it vibrant, raw, utterly captivating. At once, A Single Man is both heartbreaking in its subject matter and uplifting in its beauty, and if ...[more]

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