| Critic |
Review |
Quote |
Analysis |
This Week's Verdict |
A.O. Scott,
The New York Times |
The Brave One |
"They have a few desultory discussions about the rule of law and the ethics of extrajudicial killing, arguments that are resolved in a climax that manages to be at once preposterous, sentimental and appalling. That it may also be viscerally satisfying is a sign of just how cowardly The Brave One really is. It's a pro-lynching movie that even liberals can love.
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Most esteemed readers of the New York Times movie pages, A.O. Scott knows the murky depths of your souls.
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Stephanie Zacharek,
Salon.com |
In the Valley of Elah |
"In the abstract, I guess we should be glad filmmakers are attempting to respond to the reality of war even as we're in the thick of it. That didn't happen in the Vietnam era, although you could argue that the great filmmakers of the '60s and '70s (Altman, De Palma, Coppola, Scorsese, Penn), and even many lesser ones, were sublimating their political ideas and packing them into their movies in code, which cannier moviegoers could easily unzip." |
Why bother with subliminal politics and coded references when you can spell it all out so that even the most slow-minded popcorn-muncher gets the point?
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J Hoberman,
The Village Voice |
Eastern Promises |
"As slick as it is, Eastern Promises could, like A History of Violence, almost pass for an exceptionally well-made B-movie." |
Backhanded compliment or high praise? You be the judge.
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Armond White,
Salon.com |
Across the Universe |
"Across the Universe begs an essential question: Do filmmakers need to keep up? Would the visionary stage director Julie Taymor have embarked on this folly — a decades-late adaptation of songs by the Beatles as pretext for a story about social unrest Ñ if she had seen Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto, a glorious personal interpretation of Irish history through pop music? Or would she have bothered shoe-horning the Beatles catalog into an operatic Iraq War allegory if she had seen Ken Russell's wildly inventive Tommy, the definitive interpretation of a classic work of rock music?" |
Armond White says: Study hard, young filmmaker. |
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Robert Abele,
L.A. Times |
I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With |
"This isn't to say James kvetches about his lot in life to the manic extent Garlin's manager character on Curb Your Enthusiasm can when goaded by a king crank like Larry David, but you might wish this speed-limit-safe exercise in Woody Allen-esque urban romantic neuroses had taken jazzier comic risks." |
Welcome to mixed-metaphor city.
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