| Critic |
Review |
Quote |
Analysis |
This Week's Verdict |
Dana Stevens,
Slate |
Apocalypto |
"For a good hour, I tried to pretend that I had never heard of Mel Gibson: the maker of fanatical blockbusters, the spewer of hateful rants. I tried—really tried—to experience Apocalypto as an ethnographic thriller about an ancient culture. But though it may have been researched to within an inch of its life, this film is not, by any reasonable standard, ethnography. It teaches us nothing about Mayan civilization, religion, or cultural innovations. (Calendars? Hieroglyphic writing? Some of the largest pyramids on Earth?) Rather, Gibson's fascination with the Mayans seems to spring entirely from the fact (or fantasy) that they were exotic badasses who knew how to whomp the hell out of one another, old-school. You don't leave Apocalypto thinking of the decline of civilizations or the power of myth or anything much except, wow, that is one sick son of a bitch." |
We're not entirely sure that Mel Gibson doesn't want us to think of Mel Gibson when viewing Apocalypto. He stuck his name on the movie, he inserted himself into the trailer, and then he hogged headlines for a good month in advance of the film's release. And now that the movie's out, we're convinced it's all an elaborate cry for help. |
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Carina Chocano,
LA Times |
The Holiday |
"The alluring surfaces of other people's lives can be deceiving, though generally not in a Nancy Meyers comedy, where the thin veneer of fantasy cloaks ... more fantasy. The Holiday is the story of two single women who swap houses over Christmas and, because they're nice girls, wind up with the boyfriends they deserve. If you wrapped Jude Law in a bow and tucked Jack Black into a stocking with a leather bone, it couldn't be cozier or more Christmasy." |
Okay, those are actually kind of disturbing images. Elsewhere she refers to the female leads as "girl meat" and speculates about whether Jude Law might be an axe murderer. Is it just us or was someone expecting Hostel 2: Home for the Holidays? |
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Armond White,
New York Press |
Inland Empire |
"Since [David] Lynch is releasing Inland Empire himself . . . it's clear that he has no shame about repeating himself. Lynch obviously depends on a devoted audience that is interested in his continuing oeuvre and the twisting of his mind. It seems designed to confound newcomers as much as to delight devotees . . . Lynch's retreat into the arcane of Inland Empire betrays the revolution he almost started. Having already established his high-art credentials (receiving carte blanche that is denied even Matthew Barney), Lynch doesn't run into the problem that his surrealist rival Brian DePalma faced with The Black Dahlia. Critics expect DePalma to follow Hollywood narrative conventions despite his constant subversion of them, while Lynch is permitted to make capital-A art. Fact is, Inland Empire's conceptual obscurities are less enthralling than the latest DePalma and Barney." |
Up until he starts pulling the De Palma card (again) at the end, this is actually a surprisingly nuanced, generally mixed review from Armond that does justice to Lynch's legacy while also astutely tackling the film in question with an unblinking eye. And then he starts talking about what a masterpiece Black Dahlia is, and we just have to laugh. |
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Manohla Dargis,
New York Times |
Blood Diamond |
"Like The Constant Gardener, this film betrays an almost quasi-touristic fascination with images of black Africans, who function principally as colorful scenery or, as in the gruesome scenes inside rebel training camps, manifestations of pure evil. Pure evil that, incidentally, likes to listen to rap and, in one case, wears a Snoop Dogg T-shirt along with his gat. Good as gold, Solomon earns a sizable share of screen time, and though the performance is expectedly sympathetic, the character has none of Danny's complexity, which means that he's inherently less interesting. Mr. Hounsou, who first came to attention as a noble African in Amistad and has often had to play the same role since, must be awfully tired of holding his head up so high." |
Dear Manohla: Thank you for going there. After Amistad, Gladiator, The Four Feathers, In America, and now this, we've been seriously worrying about Djimon Hounsou's career choices: It's like he doesn't own any untattered clothes or something. |
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J. Hoberman,
Village Voice |
Apocalypto |
"Not just a walk in the park with Mel and the guys (in this case a large cast of mainly Mexican Indians speaking present- day Yucatec), this lavishly punishing picture is the third panel in Gibson's "Ordeal" triptych. The Martyrdom of the Braveheart and The Passion of the Christ have nothing on The Misadventures of the Jaguar Paw, junior citizen of a generally jovial, practical-joke-loving 16th-century Central American social unit. Given the absence of any identification, and with regard to their good looks and family values (that is, keeping pet monkeys and having babies), these noble savages might be called the Sugar Tit tribe." |
Amazingly, J-Ho actually continues to refer to them as "the Sugar Tit tribe" repeatedly throughout the review, making this his funniest piece of writing in quite some time. When he's on, no critic in America can match the wit with which Hoberman skewers his betes noires. Not Armond, not Anthony Lane. Nobody. |
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