Vampires, Melodrama, and Bad Erotica: Something for Everyone? Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) 1/4 Tepid, timid, turgid, tedious, and tame, if barely staying off the track of terrible, Fifty Shades of Grey is a monochromatic misfire, a syrupy softcore melodrama, a Harlequin Romance with pulleys. Chaste and clumsy, drab and dull, silly and sanctimonious, limp and ludicrous, it’s a Twilight ripoff...
An Avalanche of Actors Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) 3/4 Tasty, ironic, incisive, and savagely audacious, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is a weird brew of backstage black comedy and theatrical satire, a volcano of creative ideas in full eruption, and a dark comedy of desperation buoyed by unbridled artistic optimism. It will make you laugh out loud and...
The 2014 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) was another hectic ten days in a long line of new beginnings over the last thirty-nine years. It was the first time that King Street was closed to traffic for the opening weekend, and the first time that TIFF took a firm stance regarding Telluride premieres, resulting in the loss of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, among others. It was...
American Hustle (2013) 3/4 Deviously antic, deliriously energetic, and unrepentantly jumbled, American Hustle is a stereotype-drenched piece of cockeyed comedy and a pratfall-ridden work of dazzling showmanship. It’s juicy, relentless, dizzying, diverting, and works from the feet up, leaving you revved and tickled. Writer-director David O. Russell has mashed up a larcenous cast from his last two...
Blue Jasmine (2013) 3/4 Delightful, tonally sound, and uncomfortably hilarious, Blue Jasmine finds Woody Allen back in fine form after a schizophrenically inconsistent string of films that ran the gamut between pleasantly diverting (see: Midnight in Paris) and maddeningly sketchy (see: To Rome with Love). Much of the film’s success has to do with Cate Blanchett’s marvelous performance as the...
KENDALL GRANT & KATHEY GUO
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