Category: Movies

In theaters.

Superman Returns had better be a damn good movie. When director Bryan Singer left the X-Men franchise to tackle the Man of Steel, I felt a tiny bit betrayed. He was the one who had introduced me to the X-Men and made me care about them, and now he was leaving them to the tender mercies of Brett Ratner, the director behind such cinematic masterpieces as Rush Hour, Rush Hour 2 and After the Sunset. My reaction was terribly unfair, of course, to Singer and Ratner both, but it wasn't unjustified. I truly wish I'd been wrong, but X-Men: The Last Stand is exactly the blundering, empty action flick I feared it would be.

In theaters.

I'm a sucker for Chinese martial arts fantasies, the sort of movies in which warriors fly the air, so courageous and passionate that even the laws of physics can't bind them to the ground. The previews for The Promise made me smile with anticipation. Gorgeous costumes, dance-like battles, mythic stories, and a tragic woman escaping from a birdcage — what's not to love?

A lot, as it turns out. The Promise is no feast for the eyes; it's cheap fast food: synthetic, flavorless and dull.

On DVD. 

The tagline for Ninotchka, released in 1939, was simply "Garbo laughs!" That's all they needed to sell the movie: the novelty of the solemn dramatic actress in a comedy. Even today, the famous scene in which Greta Garbo's stern character finally breaks down is incandescent. She doesn't giggle in a ladylike manner. She howls, her body bent double, her eyes squeezed shut, her hand pounding the table in appreciation. I don't know how anyone could watch that scene and not laugh along with her.

In theaters. 

If Mission: Impossible III had come out two years ago, before couch jumping entered the national lexicon, would it have been a different movie? Would I still have rolled my eyes when Tom Cruise screwed up his face in faux determination? Would the opening-night audience with which I saw the flick still have tittered when he ostentatiously proclaimed his love for a naive, girlish brunette? Would the movie still have felt slick but overwhelmingly silly, the story not of a superspy but of a superstar playacting at espionage?

Cruise’s primary strength as an actor has always been his charisma, and his shenanigans of late have damaged that critical attribute. If he fails to convince us of his sincerity and sanity when he's just being himself, how can he hope to do so when he's playing characters on the big screen?

On DVD.

I never know what to make of Preston Sturges. Wildly successful as a writer-director back in the 1940s, Sturges made a number of classic screwball comedies and is still considered one of America's great film directors. Everyone is supposed to love Sturges, and I just don't get him.

When I saw The Miracle of Morgan's Creek — a ribald middle finger to the puritanical Hayes Code — I sat dumbly through the pratfalls and outrageous antics. I considered Sullivan's Travels — Sturges' light-footed justification of his preference for comedies over "important" films — to be scattered and overlong. And now The Lady Eve, his absurdist take on the battle of the sexes, just alienated me. I didn't laugh much and spent the majority of the movie with my brow furrowed, trying to figure out how I was supposed to feel about what was happening on screen.

In theaters.

When I was in high school, I befriended a girl with untreated manic depression. During her highs, she was charming and energetic, always ready with an adventure to pursue, but her lows, which came totally without warning, left her despondent, paranoid and inconsolable. I had no idea how to deal with someone who was gregarious and vivacious one minute, morose and teary-eyed the next.

Watching Lucky Number Slevin brought back memories of those roller coaster times. The movie careens between spunky banter and utter ghoulishness with enough volatility to give me whiplash. It features some great scenes, snappy dialogue and appealing performances, but the erratic tone keeps the pieces from fitting together well.

On DVD.

Why did I rent Memoirs of a Geisha? I hated the book on which it was based. Ziyi Zhang’s breathily portentous line reading in the preview — “A story like mine has NEVER been told” — made me roll my eyes. The little I heard of John Williams’ score made me long for Tan Dun’s superior work in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I suppose Memoirs made its way onto my Netflix queue because it seemed a shame to pass up the chance to see Gong Li, Michelle Yeoh and Ziyi Zhang on screen together, but I should have trusted my instincts. Memoirs of a Geisha is a dull, overwrought mess. I would have been better off holding my own personal marathon of the trio’s greatest hits, maybe Farewell My Concubine, Crouching Tiger, House of Flying Daggers and 2046.

In repertory at Film Forum through April 27. Also on DVD.

I always felt sorry for Abimelech, the king in the book of Genesis who takes Abraham’s wife, Sarah, into his harem. He doesn’t realize he’s doing anything wrong because Abraham and Sarah both insist they are brother and sister before Abimelech even shows any interest in her. But God still curses him, making all the women in his household barren until the poor guy realizes he’s been fooled.

Judging from Days of Heaven, I think writer-director Terrence Malick might share my sympathy for Abimelech. The beautiful film, released in 1978, echoes that biblical story in its tale of two Depression-era laborers and the owner of a farm where they find work during the harvest. Days of Heaven easily could have been a heavy handed metaphor of class war — I admit I expected something like that: the bourgeois screwing the proletariat literally and figuratively — but Malick’s work, as I should have realized, is far more nuanced than that.