Just the Ticket

I have seen many movies in my life, but I have seldom, if ever, seen a movie as boring and pointless as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy . Bringing a miniscule iota of character to an otherwise bland production is Gary Oldman (Christopher Nolan's Batman Trilogy) as retired spy George Smiley, who according to the film's synopsis, is supposed to help MI-6 uncover a Russian mole in their organization during the Cold War. But what the trailer advertised as an exciting, punctuated spy-hunter yarn actually consisted of roughly two hours of Oldman and several nondescript, personality-void Brits driving out to the middle of nowhere to walk aimlessly while dropping insignificant names and discussing events we never get to see. Meanwhile, various faceless Russains, Hungarians, and other Eastern Europeans, accompanied by subtitles that are both too small and too fast to read, are assassinating unremarkable film extras in an effort to shock the sleeping viewer awake long enough to realize t...

I have yet to read any of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy , but aside from a few minor flaws, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was another in a long line of successful series-to-movie adaptations. The opening credit sequence (featuring a cover of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" by Karen O, Trent Reznor, and Atticus Ross) was like something from a lost James Bond movie, managing to be creepy and awesome at the same time. And sure enough, in steps Bond himself, Daniel Craig, as disgraced "Millennuim" magazine editor Mikael Blomkvist, who is tasked by millionaire Henrik Vanger ( The Beginners ' Christopher Plummer) to solve a forty-year-old missing persons case connected to his estranged family. As his inquest begins to suggest something far more sinister than a mere disappearance, Mikael enlists the help of unconventional private investigator Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara, sister of American Horror Story 's Kate Mara) to uncover the bigger picture. ...

I am a fan of Smash , Steven Spielberg's contribution to the NBC primetime line-up, and had heard good things about Michelle Williams' performance as Marylin Monroe in My Week With Marylin , the film adaptation of Colin Clark's diary documenting his week on set of The Prince and the Showgirl with Monroe and Sir Laurence Olivier. So naturally, I was curious to see where Marylin 's many nominations came from. The story is interesting and holds historical significance, but the success of My Week With Marylin rests largely on Williams' portrayal of the title film icon. The average Marylin performance usually consists of a direct impersonation of the Monroe persona--vocal imitation coupled with coy sexuality and a platinum wig--and comes off as either novel parody or gratingly annoying iconoclasm. Williams' Marylin takes into account the woman between; behind Marylin Monroe is Norma Jean Baker, a reluctant star risen too fast, forced by fame to live her real life ...

This is the first in a three-part series devoted to movie adaptations I have rented this past week. This issue deals with Carnage , a simple film with what might be considered an all star cast, had it not consisted of just four people. John C. Reilly (a staple for anyone looking to cast a broad comedy), Jodie Foster ( The Beaver ), Cristoph Waltz ( Inglorious Basterds ), and Kate Winslet ( Titanic-3D ) star respectively as two couples trying to resolve a dispute between their children in Roman Polanski's film adaptation of Yasmina Reza's stage play, "The God of Carnage." What begins as a civil conversation between the couples quickly degenerates into a war of words as opinions and personalities clash, turning couple against couple and husband against wife in every possible combination until the film ends with nothing resolved and everyone drunk. The powerful four do what each of them does best: Reilly says inappropriate things, Winslet plays the proper woman-of-wi...

Having read other reviews prior to seeing Hugo , and being disenchanted and bludgeoned to indifference by the trailer for the film, I was understatedly reluctant to watch Martin Scorcese's adaptation of The Invention of Hugo Cabret , which I later discovered, via segments of 60 Minutes  and the 2012 Oscars, was not merely another boy-meets-robot-and-has-fun tale, but an engaging mystery of sorts revolving around the creation of film in the earliest days of cinema. Son and apprentice to a deceased clock-maker (Jude Law), Hugo goes to live and work with his uncle (Ray Winstone, London Boulevard ) as clock-winder in a Paris train station. Accompanying Hugo (and setting off the mystery) is a broken automaton which Hugo has been trying to fix with parts he steals from a local toy dealer (Ben Kingsley). Master of disguise Sacha Baron Cohen provides many of the film's laughs as a station security officer in pursuit of Hugo and the affections of flowershop owner Emily Mortimer ( City ...

After seeing the incredible make-up job that turned Leonardo DiCaprio into J. Edgar Hoover, I was disappointed to see that Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar was not available for rent this week. However, I was fortunate to see a somewhat well-concocted comedy in Tower Heist. Ben Stiller, Michael Pena, Casey Affleck, and Matthew Broderick star as employees of the Tower hotel who have their pensions Ponzi'd away by Arthur Shaw (a Bernie Madoff stand-in played viciously by Alan Alda). Enlisting the help of Eddie Murphy's professional criminal (words which should have sarcastic quotation marks around them) and a locksmith's daughter ( Precious star Gabourey Sidibe), they plan to steal back the money while avoiding federal agents and "the most sophisticated security system in New York" (yes, these quotation marks are sarcastic, too). As this is a comedy, some leeway must be granted when considering the use of mass stupidity and ignorance as plot devices, but sometime...

We finish up our journey Back & Forth through time, trading the Horrible for the merely Bad on our way to the Stranger Tides of October 23, 2011: As you may have guessed from the title, the two movies up for review this week are Bad Teacher and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides . We begin with the R-Rated comedy Bad Teacher , starring Cameron Diaz ( Knight and Day ), Justin Timberlake ( In Time ), and Jason Segel (who co-starred with Timberlake in this year's Friends With Benefits ). Diaz stars as the gleefully mean-spirited Elisabeth Halsey (the Bad Teacher in question), who must return to work at the school she retired from as a cover to earn herself enough money to pay for the plastic surgery she believes will land her a well-to-do husband. While dodging the unwanted advances of gym coach Russell Gettis (Segel) and pursuing substitute teacher Scott Delacorte (Timberlake), Halsey grows as a person, coming to realize (as much as such a character can grow an...