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Grierson & Leitch's Year In Review: The Performances Best Forgotten
Yes, many people are already writing their Top 10 movie lists for 2012. We're saving ours for the last week of the year, but while we wait for this full, rich, and weird movie year to end, we're going to start looking back at certain highlights. Tuesday, we looked at performances this year that have...
Damn It Feels Profound To Be A Gangster: <em>Killing Them Softly</em>, Reviewed
1. Killing Them Softly is a polemic disguised as a thriller, a series of scenes featuring various tiers of low-level gangsters shooting, talking, drinking, and complaining, unaware, somewhat blissfully, that they're all metaphors. (It's hard enough to be a gangster without having to walk around symb...
Grierson & Leitch's Year In Review: The Best Forgotten Performances
Yes, many people are already writing their Top 10 movie lists for 2012. We're saving ours for the last week of the year, but while we wait for this full, rich, and weird movie year to end, we're going to start looking back at certain highlights. Today, it's our favorite performances that won't be re...
<em>Hitchcock</em>: For The Birds
Over time, great individuals can attain such a level of public adoration that any sort of criticism leveled against them is treated as sacrilege, whether they be Abe Lincoln, Mother Teresa, or a Beatle not named Ringo. Naturally, that inspires a certain kind of person to take dead aim at such sacred...
<i>Red Dawn</i>: The Movie That Will Make You Hate America
In general, I don't put a lot of stock in criticisms that accuse Hollywood movies of influencing social behavior. Yes, some films glorify violence, but rather than inspiring horrible acts, I think Hollywood mostly responds to what's already out there in the culture, catering to particular audiences ...
Incense And Disappointments. <em>Life of Pi</em>, Reviewed.
1. Life of Pi is about 65 minutes of staggering cinematic beauty surrounded by 55 minutes of touchy-feely New Age claptrap. You recognize the kind, with its choose-your-own-adventure brand of spirituality, and God as captain of the ship sailing everyone's personal journey for self-fulfillment and un...
<em>Life Of Pi</em>'s Ang Lee: The World's Least-Cool Great Director
It's hard to classify Ang Lee, whose latest movie, Life of Pi, comes out on Wednesday. He's a respected, acclaimed director—he won an Oscar for Brokeback Mountain—but he's not in any one niche. He's not a purely commercial filmmaker—his one stab at that was Hulk—but he's also not a challenging, prov...
Will We Ever Hear From These <em>Twilight</em> People Again?
Friday brings with it the end of the half-decade scourge of the Twilight films. There have been five of them, and I have to confess to you, I haven't seen a single one of them. I know they are about vampires, I know the books they're based off are terrible, and I know that they make a shit-ton of mo...
How The New <em>Anna Karenina</em> Reinvents A Classic Without Destroying It In The Process
Every year, we get plenty of costume dramas and literary adaptations, and while they come in a lot of shapes and sizes, generally they can be reduced to their essential components: flowing gowns, antiquated hairdos, rampant tastefulness. A segment of moviegoers will always love these movies simply f...
Vincible. <em>Silver Linings Playbook</em>, Reviewed.
1. She's a grieving cop's widow, prone to nymphomania, locked away in a shed behind her parents' home, profoundly damaged—not broken, but close. He's a bipolar basket case who nearly beat a man half to death for showering with his wife, the same wife with whom he obsessively wants to reconcile, even...
I ♥ David O. Russell: An Unpredictable Career Gets Back On Track
With all the great directors out there to choose from—Tarantino, Spielberg, Paul Thomas Anderson—it's hard to think of many aspiring filmmakers who would look at David O. Russell's career and say, "That's who I want to be." There are auteurs who follow the beat of their own drum, and then there's Ru...
Other Than That, How Was The Movie? <em>Lincoln</em>, Reviewed.
1. The opening scene of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln will probably ring false to you and confirm your preconceptions of a sweeping, soft-focus, John Williams-scored Steven Spielberg film about Abraham Lincoln. It features Lincoln, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, visiting troops right before a fierce Civil...
The Grierson & Leitch Endorsements: Our Best Movie Presidents
In the spirit of Election Day, we here at Grierson & Leitch headquarters have decided to do our own formal endorsements. These are our full-throated endorsements of the cinematic candidates who have shown they have the fortitude and judgment to lead this great land....
<em>Cloud Atlas</em>: Crazy, Brilliant, Or Both? A Grierson & Leitch Discussion
Occasionally, one of Grierson & Leitch will disagree strongly enough with the other that a discussion is in order. Last time this happened was Compliance, which Grierson loved and Leitch didn't. (That one was a huge pageview hit because it had the word "blowjobs" in the headline.) This week, Grierso...
The Late-October Best Picture Oscars Predictions You've Been Waiting For
Coverage of the Oscars has reached tail-wagging-dog proportions in recent years: Rather than an awards show looking back at a year of films and choosing the best of them, the Academy Awards have become the journey and the destination. Not only do movies exist solely to win Oscars, but there are whol...
A Big Huge Ball Of Crazy. <em>Cloud Atlas</em>, Reviewed.
1. I've never read the book Cloud Atlas, but I bet it's good. Judging from the film, the book must be insanely ambitious—narratively and stylistically—clearly vying to be no less than some sort of grand binding theory of everything, throughout history, forever. That sort of ambition can work on the ...
You Don't Know Me: On The Terrific And Unsettling <em>The Loneliest Planet</em>
I waste as much time on the web as anyone, but one thing I always avoid are those videos that careen around the internet that depict some poor schmoe being caught on camera doing something horribly embarrassing. I don't mind if local TV news reporters accidentally make fools of themselves—they signe...
The Monster Wore A Tank Top. <em>Paranormal Activity 4,</em> Reviewed.
1. Like Grierson, I'm a sucker for the Paranormal Activity films. I don't care that their stories don't make sense, that apparently there's some sort of mythology tying everything together behind them, that no one ever, ever turns that goddamned camera off. These movies work not as movies—they're ba...
A Semi-Comprehensive List Of Everything Tyler Perry Pretends To Do In <em>Alex Cross</em>
Tyler Perry, tired (temporarily) of wearing dresses in his own movies, stars tomorrow in Alex Cross, playing the titular character of James Patterson's series of novels. Here is a semi-comprehensive list of everything Tyler Perry pretends to do in Alex Cross, in order. Spoilers abound....
<em>The Sessions</em> And The Trap Of The Disease-Of-The-Week Movie
All genres have their trademarks. In romantic comedies, the two meet, fall in love, break up, and then wind up together. In action movies, a lot of ass is kicked, then more ass is kicked, and then at the end, a hell of a lot of ass is kicked. That predictability isn't always a bad thing—after all, w...