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BRETT MICHEL

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Review: When In Rome

... make a hasty retreat
Exhibits neither an eye nor an ear for comedy.

By: BRETT MICHEL | February 02, 2010

It bites
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson dons a pink tutu and wings as Derek, a hockey player who's earned the nickname "The Tooth Fairy" for his knack for knocking out opposing players' bicuspids on the ice.

By: BRETT MICHEL | January 26, 2010

Review: The Spy Next Door

Brian Levant’s cheap misfire
Let’s hope Chan’s fans back East never get a whiff of this one.

By: BRETT MICHEL | January 13, 2010

Review: Leap Year

Needs to take a long leap off a short cliff
Why, Amy Adams, why?

By: BRETT MICHEL | January 13, 2010

Review: Everybody's Fine

It's . . . fine, we guess
You'll be forgiven if you mistake Robert De Niro's face for Robert Young's next to Kate Beckinsale's, Drew Barrymore's, and Sam Rockwell's on the poster for Kirk ( Waking Ned Devine ) Jones's remake of Stanno tutti bene .

By: BRETT MICHEL | December 09, 2009

Blu Christmas . . . without DVD

Kick your films into hi-def this season with those other shiny silver discs
Ah, yes: the most wonderful time of the year, tinged with muddy snow and the creeping darkness of our most recent Depression.

By: BRETT MICHEL | December 18, 2009

Review: The House of the Devil

The '80s revival hits the horror genre
Have you walked near a college campus lately? You might notice that the ’80s are creeping into fashion, the way the ’70s did a few years back, and with the same lack of irony. It’s happening in cinemas, too — something that’s not entirely unwelcome when it comes to the horror genre.

By: BRETT MICHEL | December 02, 2009

Review: Red Cliff

John Woo returns east
Hong Kong auteur John Woo hit commercial and artistic pay dirt in the US with Face/Off , his loopy Nicolas Cage/John Travolta neo-noir, but once he’d directed Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible II , was there anywhere left to go?

By: BRETT MICHEL | November 25, 2009

Interview: Gabourey Sidibe

A hidden gem discovered in Harlem
"While reading the book, I realized that I knew this girl in so many different people. Not just girls but boys, and not just black people but white and Asian and Indian."

By: BRETT MICHEL | November 18, 2009

Review: Michael Jackson's This Is It

Is this it?
The Star Wars –style titles that begin Kenny Ortega’s hastily assembled Michael Jackson tribute documentary explain that the film has been whittled down from 100 hours of behind-the-scenes video shot between last April and June during rehearsals for the King of Pop’s planned 50-date “This Is It” London concert series.

By: BRETT MICHEL | November 12, 2009

Interview: Lone Scherfig

An Educated Lady
Born in Denmark in 1959, Lone Scherfig first gained international attention in 2000 with Italian for Beginners, a charming little film that won her the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. A couple of years later, she followed up with Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself, her first English-language effort, filmed in Scotland and starring Adrian Rawlins and Shirley Henderson.

By: BRETT MICHEL | November 16, 2009

Review: The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day

This is bullshit.
You’d think Troy Duffy would have learned something in the decade since he blew his golden ticket with The Boondock Saints .

By: BRETT MICHEL | November 02, 2009

Review: The Stepfather

Remake fails to get any blood flowing
If you call a film The Stepfather , then your title character should have the decency to marry into that perfect little family that he’s predisposed to butcher and kill.

By: BRETT MICHEL | October 21, 2009

Review: An Education

Carey Mulligan graduates with honors
Let’s get this right out of the way: Carey Mulligan is the real thing.

By: BRETT MICHEL | October 15, 2009

Interview: Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson

Picking the brains of Zombieland 's stars
Vampires may have taken a bite out of the popular zeitgeist in the past couple of years, but the nearly $25 million in ticket sales that greeted the opening of Zombieland, as it shuffled into theaters this past weekend, just goes to prove that while flesh-eating ghouls might be (un)dead, you should never count them out.

By: BRETT MICHEL | October 07, 2009

Review: Fame

A PG-rated, post- High School Musical remake: why, exactly?
Oh, MGM: I realize you're staving off bankruptcy, but is remaking past hits the answer?

By: BRETT MICHEL | September 30, 2009

Review: Five Minutes of Heaven

Or, rather, 90 minutes of tension
It's easy to see what attracted Liam Neeson and James Nesbitt ( Bloody Sunday ) to Prime Suspect veteran Guy Hibbert's screenplay: it's an actor's showcase.

By: BRETT MICHEL | September 23, 2009

Review: Love Happens

Melodrama also happens
Half an hour into the screening of this tearjerker from Brandon Camp, three women exited. They made the right choice.

By: BRETT MICHEL | September 23, 2009

Review: Still Walking

Delightful
By now, it's a bit of a cliché to compare the work of Hirokazu Koreeda to the masterful films of Yasujiro Ozu — something of which I've certainly been guilty.

By: BRETT MICHEL | September 16, 2009

Review: 9

Shane Acker expands his short
"Why is 6 afraid of 7? Because 7-8-9!" Although the logic of this riddle may puzzle adults, the word- (or number-) play slays 'em in the schoolyard.

By: BRETT MICHEL | September 09, 2009

Review: Betty Blue, The Director's Cut

Well-remembered arthouse film gains an extra hour
"I had known Betty for a week," a voiceover intones. The voice is that of Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade), an unpublished novelist, whom we see fucking Betty (Béatrice Dalle in a star-making turn) in the slow zoom that serves as the opening shot of Jean-Jacques Beineix's well-remembered contribution to erotic cinema.

By: BRETT MICHEL | September 09, 2009

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