| Critic |
Review |
Quote |
Analysis |
This Week's Verdict |
Kenneth Turan,
Los Angeles Times |
The Nativity Story |
"As Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ powerfully
demonstrated, lots of people are willing to spend serious money to see films with Christian subject matter. The Nativity Story is attempting to tap into that market by Leaving to Mel the Things That Are Mel's and concentrating on the uplifting beginning of Jesus' life rather than the violent close. Unfortunately for potential viewers, the trailer for The Nativity Story has gotten this film's nature exactly wrong. This is not a chance to 'experience the most timeless of stories as you've never seen it before' but just the opposite: an opportunity,
for those who want it, to encounter this story exactly the way it's almost always been told. For though one of the film's producers has said that Catherine Hardwicke was hired to direct 'because she cuts across the grain of the picture-book version of the movie that could have been made,' that's just what the filmmaker and her team have come up with." |
Kinda makes you wonder. Fervent believer that he is, you think Mel is secretly wishing his movie kicks The Nativity's ass next week? And if so, how does he feel about that? As for this review, it's always nice when Kenneth Turan finds a sense of humor. |
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Dana Stevens,
Slate |
The Nativity Story |
"It seems odd that Hardwicke, who coaxed superb performances from both Evan Rachel Wood and Holly Hunter in the emotionally raw coming-of-age story Thirteen, would be content with such a placid, even submissive Mary. As she proved in Whale Rider, [Keshia] Castle-Hughes has no shortage of spark. If only the movie had tweaked expectations enough to give her Mary a Gethsemane moment, in which she struggled to reconcile the directive of her God with her natural adolescent desire to rebel, to have fun, maybe even to taste the pleasures of the flesh. Oscar Isaac's Joseph gets just a hint of such a moment when a merchant woman in Jerusalem, blessing him and his pregnant wife, assures him that 'To see yourself in a young face, there is no greater joy.' For just a moment we think about Joseph's daily trials, squiring around a wife that everyone believes has cuckolded him, denied even the simple joys of fatherhood. Sure, he gets a couple of moments of tormented doubt, but would n't it be great if Mary and Joseph had one big squabble en route to Bethlehem, the road-trip fight to end all road-trip fights?" |
I don't know about that. "I'll turn this donkey around right now"?? It's all fun and games until someone loses a Messiah. |
|
Scott Foundas,
LA Weekly
|
The Nativity Story |
"Hardwicke's most radical conceit, however, at least for a movie
positioned as a red-state holiday perennial - there is already a
soundtrack album featuring "Christian & Country artists" performing
"Christmas favorites inspired by the film" - is that most of the major
roles are acted by performers of Algerian, Iranian, Israeli and Sudanese
descent. Castle-Hughes is Maori, of course. The powerful young actor
Oscar Isaac, who plays Joseph, is Guatemalan. And one actress, Hiam
Abbass (who plays Mary's mother, Anna), was actually born in Nazareth.
In short, their skin is dark, which makes The Nativity Story the first
Hollywood religious picture in memory (if not ever) to imply, for most
of its running time, that Jesus Christ probably looked more like Jim
Brown than Jim Caviezel. Until, that is, the newborn Lord makes his
cameo appearance at the end, bearing a decidedly milky complexion." |
The Message: Mary, Joseph, Anna, et al may have been
olive-complexioned...but God is white. |
|
Nathan Lee,
Village Voice
|
Turistas |
"It doesn't come as much of a surprise when the hot babes and ripped studs of Turistas are strapped to a table and gutted like pigs. The trailer dropped more than a hint, and the movie itself begins with a montage of bound wrists, dilated pupils, and the molestation of various quivering innards. Let this serve as a warning to those who suppose the
following hour of hot, young white people frolicking on the beaches of Brazil will come at no cost." |
Doesn't AIDS count as a cost anymore? My, how times have changed. |
|
Armond White,
New York Press |
Bobby |
"Emilio Estevez-fondly known as Otto by those forward-thinking people who consider Repo Man one of the best American movies of the '80s-has directed and written Bobby as a personal follow-up to that indie landmark. Bobby has a humane sweetness that isn't easy to sell (or find) in this cynical, fractionalized period of American
social history...It's been too easy for smarter-than-thou reviewers to deride Bobby as hokey; these are the same trendy camp-followers who quoted opportunistic dialogue from Revenge of the Sith ('This is how liberty dies-with thunderous applause.') because, for the moment, it confirmed their own political pessimism. They're rejecting Bobby's optimism by belittling it as naive or inelegant filmmaking. Because these Borat-lovers prefer hollow, alienating fragmentation, they are not attuned to one of the greatest pleasure in Hollywood filmmaking: when movie stars play common, working-class people, they ennoble and humanize average American life." |
These things Armond believes:
1. Bobby is a sequel to Repo Man.
2. Borat-lovers like to quote Revenge of the Sith, particularly the political parts.
3. It takes a movie star playing a commoner to "ennoble and humanize" average American life. |
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