“For those of us who go crazy for inscrutable actorly tics, there is no more compelling young performer right now than Ryan Gosling. He always takes the path of most resistance into every scene. Carrying the torch from old-school Sean Penn and Nic Cage, reacting to simple scenarios with magnetic, corkscrew affectations.” – Philadelphia Weekly, 07/27/2011
Monthly Archives: July 2011
SARAH’S KEY
“Isn’t it a little early in the year for producer Harvey Weinstein to already be grubbing for Oscars with a Holocaust melodrama? A Shoah-infused Eat Pray Love, with the massacre of millions a brief detour on a bitchy magazine writer’s journey toward inane self-actualization.” – Philadelphia Weekly, 07/27/2011
FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS
“Friends with Benefits is a surprisingly dirty movie, but it embraces human sexuality as something so common, happy and fun that I’d prefer to just call it ‘naughty.’ There are more giggles than grunts, which is somehow way sexier than most modern pictures that make a big show out of trying to be erotic.” – The Improper Bostonian, 07/27/2011
PROJECT NIM
“As in Man On Wire, Marsh lays on the artsy editing effects a bit too thick at times, but there’s no denying the human pull of this animal drama. By the time some of these obliviously cruel academics were done yammering, I was rooting for the picture to end with a shot of the Statue of Liberty on a beach.” – Philadelphia Weekly, 07/20/2011
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART II
“This was a story that might not have been particularly well-told on-screen, and honestly never made for great movies. (If you ask me, 2007’s The Order of the Phoenix was the only one that ever came close to transcending the serialized trappings.) But it comes to an end with class, dignity and a fair amount of relief on the part of yours truly.” – Philadelphia Weekly, 07/13/2011
HORRIBLE BOSSES
“A ramshackle assembly of recycled characters and conflicting tones duct-taped together at odd angles, director Seth Gordon’s contribution to the summer of raunchy, R-rated comedy squanders a wonderfully relatable premise. With all the talent involved on this roster, is naming a character ‘Motherfucker Jones’ really the best they could come up with?” – Philadelphia Weekly, 07/13/2011
TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON
“To say Dark of the Moon is the best Transformers movie is hardly saying anything at all. The picture surpasses its notorious forebears by being visually accomplished, occasionally coherent and nowhere near as jaw-droppingly racist as the two films that came before. Am I damning with faint praise?” – The Improper Bostonian, 07/13/2011