leitch Page 11 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Subtle As A Boomsaw: <em>Elysium,</em> Reviewed.
1. Elysium, like writer-director Neill Blomkamp's much-loved first film District 9, is very concerned with making you understand that it is about something. I wasn't as big a fan of District 9 as most were—it felt like a great idea for a short film, which it was, stretched out to feature length—but ...
An Averagely Average Comedy: <em>We're The Millers</em>, Reviewed.
Jason Sudeikis is a perfect fit for We're the Millers, which is a shame, since the movie isn't quite as funny as he is. During his time on Saturday Night Live, Sudeikis often played the handsome, average guy who, the longer you hung out with him, seemed stranger and stranger. He could be the straigh...
Lindsay Lohan Is the Only Part of <em>The Canyons</em> That Isn't Horrible
The Canyons opens (and ends, over the closing credits) with photographs of abandoned, dilapidated movie theaters, which would be the world's most obvious metaphor if the film were actually competent enough to be about what it wants to be about. Director Paul Schrader (who should know better) and wri...
Declawed. <em>The Wolverine</em>, Reviewed.
The Wolverine feels less like a blockbuster than a well-turned piece of brand management. Everything in the film has been made with care, a certain amount of taste and intelligence, and such bland competence that what's most striking about it is how safe it is. The filmmakers have taken one of the m...
Lying and Charm: Woody Allen's <em>Blue Jasmine</em>, Reviewed.
Write and direct about 45 movies in the span of five decades, and there's a pretty good chance that certain themes will keep repeating themselves. Woody Allen's huge body of work is impressive both because of the number of gems he's produced—by dint of his work ethic, he has more great films to his ...
<em>The Conjuring</em> Is Old-School Terrifying
The Conjuring didn't literally scare the piss out of me, but it was close, and all told, there might have been a dribble or two....
Giant Robots And Giant Aliens. <em>Pacific Rim</em>, Reviewed.
1. Lord help me, I couldn't have been happier coming out of Pacific Rim. It's not a great movie—it's just barely a good one—but it is a damned relief. This is not a sour, darkened, lumbering, origin-story-spinning blockbuster complete with plodding backstory and a faux antihero at its center. It is...
<em>Fruitvale Station</em> Will Make You Cry Like A Baby
Early in the morning on New Year's Day 2009, a 22-year-old man named Oscar Grant, on his way home with his girlfriend, was shot and killed by a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) cop while at the Fruitvale BART stop in Oakland. The incident was captured by dozens of commuters on a stopped train, and the...
The Grierson & Leitch Top 12 Movies Of The First Half Of 2013
Shockingly, we are more than halfway through 2013. As always, the best, most "prestigious" movies won't be released until November or December, because the people who vote on the Oscars are senile and cannot remember anything they saw more than 20 minutes ago. But there have been plenty of outstandi...
You Should Absolutely Not See <em>The Lone Ranger</em>
I just moved halfway across the country and didn't get a chance to see The Lone Ranger. I figured it was probably terrible and figured I'd ask Grierson to make sure. Thus, a conversation between someone who hasn't seen The Lone Ranger but suspects it's lousy and someone who has seen it and therefor...
Been There, Bombed That. <em>White House Down</em>, Reviewed.
Die Hard was a brilliant concept for an action movie that's been much duplicated since: Die Hard on a bus (Speed); Die Hard in a hockey rink (Sudden Death); Die Hard on a battleship (Under Siege). But what a lot of the copycats forget is that it's not the claustrophobic location that made the origi...
Undead And Uptight: <em>World War Z</em>, Reviewed.
1. At this point, the zombie movie has gone through just about every permutation possible, from its low-budget schlock horror roots all the way into the world of comedy, faux-documentary, Western, even romance. The one thing we haven't seen yet from the zombie genre, at least until the release of W...
Pixar Inches Back On Track: <em>Monsters University</em>, Reviewed.
Monsters University isn't amazing. Yet it is bright, shiny, amusing, and charming, and after the disappointing Cars 2 and Brave, it's a relief to leave a Pixar movie feeling properly entertained. It wasn't always that way; the animation studio once delivered gems on a consistent basis. But Pixar spo...
It's A Turd! It's Plain! <em>Man Of Steel</em>, Reviewed.
1. On the surface, it seems obvious why you'd attempt to reboot the Superman franchise using the Christopher Nolan-Batman model. Nolan's Dark Knight films are terrific, brooding and powerful, and, oh by the way, they grossed a combined $2.5 billion worldwide. But their trying to make a tortured-supe...
Rogen's Heroes: <em>This Is the End</em>, Reviewed.
When they're not performing, actors are basically worthless human beings. Or so goes the central joke in This Is the End, and it turns out that you can make a really funny movie based almost entirely on that joke. Written and directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and based on their short Jay and...
The Little Superhero Movie That Couldn't: Defending <i>Superman Returns</i>
Next Friday, Man of Steel opens. It's the second stab by Warner Bros. to reboot the Superman franchise since its Christopher Reeve movies of the late 1970s and '80s. (And that's not even including all the failed attempts to get a new Superman movie off the ground, including a Batman Vs. Superman pro...
Google Dearth: <i>The Internship</i>, Reviewed
Most movies sell some sort of fantasy: True love is real; good always triumphs over evil; all dogs go to heaven. But few peddle so many as The Internship, which reunites Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson for the first time since their 2005 hit Wedding Crashers. Like Larry Crowne, The Internship is a com...
Joss Whedon Enjoys His Job More Than You Do
The best part about Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing is that it's not particularly proud of itself for adapting Shakespeare. Filmmakers tend to tackle the Bard out of hubris (the Mel Gibson Hamlet), an attempt to be some sort of authority (Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet), a flamboyant go-for-batshit-...
Does Jaden Smith, <i>After Earth's</i> Uncompelling Star, Really Want This?
When film critics talk about a star's performance, they usually resort to clichés. The actor always "lights up the screen" or "disappears into a role," and watch out, because "you can't take your eyes off him." The reason why writers (and audiences) recycle those old saws is because they're standar...
What Happened To The Jokes? <em>The Hangover, Part III,</em> Reviewed.
1. The Hangover, Part III is better than Part II, but not by much, and really only because it didn't just recycle, almost beat for beat, the plot of the first film. The plot it lands on this time isn't much better, though, and all told, it doesn't have much more energy than that film did. The two se...