‘Love’ sexy but imperfect
For the past few years, fans of romantic comedy have had bitter pills to swallow.
From J-Lo’s “The Back-Up Plan” to nearly anything with Jennifer Aniston in it, the once-buoyant genre has become limp and boring, hamstrung by an assembly-line mentality toward filmmaking that regards originality as if it were Nancy Pelosi at a Sarah Palin pep rally.
So let’s give thanks for, and bestow a big smooch on, the risk-taking ways of “Love & Other Drugs.” The passionate dramedy about the combustible relationship between pharmaceutical salesman Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal) and artist/cafe worker Maggie Murdock (Anne Hathaway) is just the antidote the romantic comedy has desperately needed.
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Source: www.kansas.com
Trapped inside ‘Tron’
Hugely high-tech and forward-thinking in its day, “Tron” now looks cheesy and quaint in retrospect, with its blocky graphics and simplistic blips and bleeps. The original film from 1982 was all about the possibility of technology and the human imagination, and the adventures that could result from marrying the two, but only now are the computer-generated effects available to render this digital world in its fullest potential.
Hence, nearly three decades later, we have the sequel “Tron: Legacy,” which is in 3-D (of course) but is actually best viewed in IMAX 3-D, if that option is available to you. The whole point of the story and the aesthetics are that they’re meant to convey an immersive experience. We’re supposed to feel just as trapped inside this challenging and dangerous electronic realm as the film’s characters.
And at over two hours, we are indeed trapped — there is no justifiable reason for such a lengthy running time, especially given that the original got in, did what it had to do and got out in about an hour and a half. While director Joseph Kosinski’s feature film debut is thrilling and cool-looking for about the first half, its races, games and visuals eventually grow repetitive, which only draws attention to how flimsy and preposterous the script is from Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz.
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‘Harry Potter’ leads box office
LOS ANGELES — Harry Potter has cast his biggest box-office spell yet with a franchise record $125.1 million domestically over opening weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday.
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1″ also added $205 million in 54 overseas countries, bringing the film’s worldwide total to $330.1 million.
DreamWorks Animation’s “Megamind,” the No. 1 movie the previous two weekends, fell to second place.
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Characters still as involving in ‘Hornet’s,’ but story isn’t
The third of the Swedish films based on Stieg Larsson’s wildly popular “Millennium trilogy” of novels, “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,” finally brings to a close the epic, sordid tale of emotionally damaged computer hacker Lisbeth Salander and her heroic journalist friend Mikael Blomkvist.
The first films, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and “The Girl Who Played With Fire,” were solid, engrossing mysteries. But they’ve become less involving each time.
“Dragon” was a suspenseful, sometimes hard-to-watch introduction to Lisbeth (the smoldering Noomi Rapace) and why she is the way she is — defiantly independent, resourceful, feral. She met Mikael (Michael Nyqvist) when he hired her to help in his search for a woman who had been missing for decades.
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‘Tangled’ overtakes ‘Potter’ at box office
LOS ANGELES — Mandy Moore’s animated musical “Tangled,” a new take on long-haired fairy-tale princess Rapunzel, sewed up the No. 1 spot at the weekend box office with $21.5 million in its second weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. That raised the Disney release’s domestic total to $96.5 million.
“Tangled” had debuted in second-place over Thanksgiving behind “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1,” which had been at the top of the box office the two previous weekends.
“Harry Potter” slipped to No. 2 this weekend with $16.7 million. The next-to-last chapter in the Warner Bros. franchise about the teen wizard lifted its domestic haul to $244.2 million.
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Fine acting by Watts, Penn lifts fast-moving ‘Game’
“Fair Game” is a thickly plotted, taut thriller that’s a lot to take in at first, jumping right into the hectic, caustic political scene of Washington, D.C.
But when it settles in and gets moving, it’s a thoroughly engrossing, suspenseful tale with expectedly top-notch performances from the film’s leads.
Based on the books “The Politics of Truth” by Joseph Wilson and “Fair Game” by Valerie Plame Wilson, the film tells their real-life story. It starts with Valerie (Naomi Watts), who was a covert officer in the CIA’s counter-proliferation department, as she discovers that Iraq has no active nuclear weapons program. And this is contrary to the belief of many high-ranking officials in the U.S. government.
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‘Black Swan’ disjointed, but it will keep you guessing
“Black Swan” is the closest thing to ballet horror we’re probably ever going to see.
While that may be a novelty, “Black Swan” is not exactly an original story. But in the hands of wildly imaginative director Darren Aronofsky (“The Wrestler”), it possesses a chaotic edginess and visual flair that keep us tantalized.
Driven by a bravura performance by Natalie Portman, it’s a suspenseful, surreal experience, but also one lacking emotional payoff.
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Source: www.kansas.com
fat bitch
