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Newness
New redesign. New reviews. Same ol' critic. Out Now:Duplicity (Cinematical)Knowing (Slant magazine)The Great Buck Howard (Slant magazine)Skills Like This (Slant magazine)We Pedal Uphill (The Screengrab) And coming next week: the usual new-release reviews, two IFC features, and write-ups of some of the films featured in Lincoln Center/MOMA's annual New Directors/New Films series.
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Horrific Perspectives
My latest Sandbox column at IFC News is about the use of first-person POVs in horror cinema and gaming. And, at least in terms of writing that was published, the week's most positive review is of a horror film. Which, I guess, means that you should be enjoying a good scare this weekend. The Sandbox:…
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Watching the Watchmen
Watchmen has finally made it to the big screen. And though most are surely exhausted from all the hype, Zack Snyder's adaptation is actually better than expected…though not necessarily good. Now Playing:Watchmen (Slant magazine)Explicit Ills (Slant magazine)12 (Slant magazine)Tokyo! (The Screengrab)Sherman's Way (The Screengrab)Reunion (The Screengrab)
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Films and Games, Sitting in a Tree…
Today marks the debut of my new biweekly IFC.com column, The Sandbox, in which I'll be exploring the relationship between films and video games. My first topic: the re-emergence of 3D. The Sandbox: New Movies Enter an Old Dimension of Gaming (IFC.com) As for reviews, let's just say that you know things are bad when…
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Quarantine (2008): B-
The third of 2008’s first-person-perspective horror outings after Cloverfield and Diary of the Dead, Quarantine uses its aesthetic conceit for a zombie tale that’s not as frightening as it should be, but still better than the average Hollywood scare-a-thon. An adaptation of Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza’s Spanish-language original [Rec], John Erick Dowdle’s film is…
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Whatchoo Linkin’ ’bout, Willis?
These reviews are brawny, but my cousin did not – I repeat, did not – inject me with random steroids. I injected them myself. And by steroids, I mean coffee. And by injected, I mean drank. In Theaters:Fired Up (Slant magazine)Must Read After My Death (The Screengrab)Eleven Minutes (The Screengrab)
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Taken (2009): B
Single-minded and suitably rough around the edges, Taken offers B-movie action via a story that plays out like a modern-day version of Hardcore. After a lifetime spent putting his covert-ops job before his family, divorcé Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), in an attempt to rehabilitate his relationship with 17-year-old daughter Kim (Maggie Grace), reluctantly agrees to…
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Coraline (2009): A-
Among Coraline’s many triumphs is its employment of 3-D as an immersive technique that doesn’t bring the action to you (via gimmicky shots of stuff leaping out at the audience) but, rather, invites you inside the action’s cinematic space. The rich, layered depth of director Henry Selick’s 3-D images provides a purely sensory thrill, amplifying…
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Kill-Kill-Kill, Meh-Meh-Meh
Jason returns to theaters this weekend, with a reboot that's shiny, brutal, and – aside from ditching the campiness – not very different from his many other outings. It's far preferable to Confessions of a Shopaholic, but not nearly as good as James Gray's excellent Two Lovers. In Theaters:Friday the 13th (Slant magazine)Two Lovers (The…
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Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008): C
Leave it to Woody Allen to muck up a threesome involving Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz. Then again, given that Allen’s recent track record has been uniformly blah – to the point that even bemoaning his fall-from-grace has become a tiresome requirement of critiquing his yearly output – it’s hardly surprising to find Vicky Cristina…
