Previews For my money, the pick of the week has gotta be Elizabeth: The Golden Age, which, believe it or not, is a sequel to the great Cate Blanchett Elizabeth pic from a few years ago. (Sorry, Internet’s down.) Blanchett is back for the sequel, as is Geoffrey Rush as Walsingham, the devious Machiavelli-quoting proto-spy. […]
Screens
Posted inArts + Scene
All Bases Covered
Previews No, I can’t get enough of Jane Austen. Opening Friday, Oct. 5, is The Jane Austen Book Club, based on the popular novel by Karen Joy Fowler. Written and directed by Robin Swicord, who wrote the screenplay for Memoirs of a Geisha, the story is about a Jane Austen book club in California whose […]
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Welcome Back, Cronenberg
Previews Opening Friday, Sept. 14, The Kingdom is about an F.B.I. team that investigates an act of terrorism in Saudi Arabia. See review below. Written and directed by Paul Haggis ( Crash ), In the Valley of Elah stars Tommy Lee Jones as a career officer and Susan Sarandon as his wife. They try to […]
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Buscemi’s Chatty Side
Previews David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence was one of my top films of 2005. Now he’s back with Eastern Promises, again starring Viggo Mortensen, who is here teamed with the excellent Naomi Watts. Crime and violence are now centered in London, as we follow the stories of crime family member Nikolai (Mortensen) and midwife […]
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Gypsies, Cowboys and Prodigies
Previews I’m expecting Jodie Foster to bring a lot more class to the revenge vigilante film than Kevin Bacon did recently. In The Brave One , opening Friday, Sept. 14, Foster is in her element as a woman bent on revenge after suffering a brutal attack, in a film directed by Neil Jordan. Terrence Howard […]
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Kill Me Now
PREVIEWS Continuing what Hollywood does frequently if not always effectively, the remake of the 1957 film of the same title 3:10 to Yuma opens Friday, Sept. 7. Based on the short story by Elmore Leonard, now well known for his tongue-in-cheek thrillers, the film tells the story of rancher Dan Evans (Christian Bale replacing Van […]
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Coronation of Cheadle — Great performances buoy Talk to Me, Becoming Jane
Note: Thanks to Jay Herzog for his literate but totally misguided reviews the past two weeks. (Just kidding, except for the literate part.) Also, apologies to my editor — I really did think about going toSuperbadbut it was fourth in a list of four. I’ll try to improve, honest. Previews Opening Friday, Aug. 24, is […]
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Summer Sunshine and Stardust
Previews Hello, film fans. The peripatetic Charlie Myers is once again out wandering the globe, so for the second week in a row you’re stuck with a know-nothing’s guide to this week’s new releases. And from where I sit, this week may well go down in the annals as The Week That Bad Films Happened […]
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Dumb Samberg, smart Bourne
Previews It’s the biggest opening weekend in months, and our own Charlie Myers has successfully ducked the onslaught by scampering away to Maryland. You’re stuck with an amateur’s picks of the flicks. In ascending order of importance: *Skinwalkers* . The publicity says that "Two sects of werewolves battle one another for control of a half-human/half-werewolf […]
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Lindsay Lohan’s bad week
Previews Opening Friday, August 3 is the concluding film of the Bourne trilogy, The Bourne Ultimatum , which began in 2002 with The Bourne Identity . These spy thrillers, based on the novels of Robert Ludlum, are on my all-time top five list for this genre (which, pending my actually seeing Ultimatum , only leaves […]
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Shue, nerd — NCRT’s new production trapped in the ’80s
If you’re interested in a summer night out, perhaps contributing to a worthy cause while seeing some friends and having some laughs, the North Coast Repertory Theatre production of The Nerd will probably satisfy. If your demands and desires are greater, maybe not so much. This comedy is set in Terre Haute, Ind., in the […]
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Homer & Hairspray
Previews Fans of Homer Simpson, and they are legion, need no introduction to his big-screen debut in The Simpsons Movie after 18 seasons on TV. The story is not a surprise: Homer must save the world from a disaster of his own making. With a new pet pig and the familiar cast of voices that […]