[6] A demented German surgeon connects the gastro-intestinal tracts of two hapless American women and a Japanese man to create a ‘human centipede’ in this sick little horror flick from Dutch director Tom Six. The film is most horrifying before the operation, where the surgeon (played most creepily by Dieter Laser), gives his victims a slide show presentation of what he’s about to do with …
[7] Viggo Mortensen travels with his young son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) across a post-apocalyptic wasteland in this bleak drama based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy. The premise is intriguing, far more than the movie dares explore, even with an R-rating. The storyline hangs on the intimate relationship between father and son. Viggo is frighteningly open with the boy, explaining how they’re going to have to …
[5] You know this story by now, even if you haven’t seen the movie: Girl meets vampire, girl wants to screw the vampire, but vampire is too good for that shit. I don’t generally like a story where one character pines obsessively over another (which is why I don’t like most John Cusack movies), so when two characters start pining obsessively, I’m bound to be …
[3] Sandra Bullock gives her most offputting and peculiar performance in All About Steve, a film that sets the feminist movement back about fifty years. Bullock plays Mary, a woman in her forties who lives with her parents, tries to make a meager living creating crossword puzzles for her local paper, and who inexplicably falls head-over-heals obssessively in love with a blind date (adorable Bradley …
[3] Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning star as supernaturally gifted people on the run from a government agency that wants to control their powers. Think X-Men, but way watered down and not nearly as cool. There’s some mediocre action in the beginning and a little more at the end, but the long middle portion of this movie is tediously boring, overburdened with more plotting and …
[7] Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly are at the top of their game in A Beautiful Mind, Ron Howard’s Oscar-winning biopic about John Nash, the brilliant but haunted mathematician who overcame schizophrenia and received the Nobel Prize. These are the best performances I’ve seen from Crowe and Connelly — their relationship is the glue that holds the film together. The first two-thirds of the movie …
[5] This haunted hotel room flick, based on a short story by Stephen King, brings nothing new to the haunted house subgenre. It even veers straight into cliches like dramatic temperature changes, ghostly images of murders past, and (my favorite) the paintings that change. I know it must be hard to breathe new life into a tired formula, but screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski …
[8] Director Kevin Reynolds (Waterworld, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves) delivers his best effort to date with this telling of Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo. Jim Caviezel stars as Edmond Dantes, a man betrayed by his friend Fernand Mondego (Guy Pierce) and falsely imprisoned for thirteen years in a hellish prison. Richard Harris plays the elderly priest who accidentally burrows his way into …
[4] Saturday Night Live‘s Andy Samberg stars in this comedy about an aspiring stunt man trying to raise money for his step-father’s heart transplant. I like Samberg, but he isn’t quite charismatic or funny enough to carry this particular movie over the finish line. He gets assistance from the always reliable Bill Hader and Danny McBride, but it’s not enough to make Hot Rod memorable. …
[7] Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr. star in this odd hybrid of biopic and fable that mixes elements from the lives of photographer Diane Arbus and a hirsute freakshow performer named Lionel. Kidman plays Arbus, a woman who in the 1950s had yet to come out of her shell and discover her gifts. When a mysterious new neighbor moves in upstairs, she’s drawn to him …
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