Movies, Pitch

Much Ado About Nothing

Jim Ridley — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Jim Ridley In its best moments, Joss Whedon's modern-dress movie version of Much Ado About Nothing seems most like what it is: a house-party lark among old friends who have decided to perform Shakespeare rather than dust off the Twister or find the croquet mallets. That's pretty much how it seems in its worst moments, too.…

World War Z

Bilge Ebiri — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Bilge Ebiri Zombie movies are, at heart, disaster movies. The horror they exploit is not so much of the "Boo!" variety, but rather that of society in full collapse.…

The Bling Ring

Scott Wilson — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Scott Wilson By the time Harvey Levin sat down on the cultural toilet to drop TMZ on us, Sofia Coppola's career as a writer and director was well under way. But the three movies she has made since the celebrity-gossip clearinghouse's 2005 arrival, starting with the next year's Marie Antoinette, are oddly difficult to imagine in a world without TMZ — not to mention, now, Gawker and Facebook and Instagram.…

Monsters University

Craig D. Lindsey — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Craig D. Lindsey Monsters University is a rare cinematic creature: a prequel nobody asked for that turns out to be a summer godsend. Somebody at Disney or Pixar thought it would be a good idea to make an origin story for the characters from 2001's quirky Monsters, Inc., following the hardworking bogeymen during their college years.…

This Is the End

Jason Shawhan — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Jason Shawhan If you want to make a film about guys dealing with their feelings and insecurities, you have to gussy it up with gross-out comedy, sci-fi/horror/fantasy trappings, or sports. Or a confrontation with mortality.…

Before Midnight

Bilge Ebiri — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Bilge Ebiri In 1995's Before Sunrise, Richard Linklater cast Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy as two smug but intelligent 20-somethings who met on a train and spent a magical evening walking around Vienna before saying goodbye. The characters, Jesse and Celine, reconnected in 2004's Before Sunset, a remarkable film that countered Sunrise's focus on the intoxicating nature of possibility with a meditation on regret and paths not taken.…

Man of Steel is a hollowed-out Superman

Scott Wilson — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Scott Wilson I have an idea: How about nothing but tent-pole icons for five years? As in: every U.S. movie devoted to a different franchise figure every summer.…

Frances Ha's Greta Gerwig writes out loud

Dan Lybarger — Tue, 28 May 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Dan Lybarger There's a moment in Frances Ha when a young woman tells Greta Gerwig's 27-year-old Frances that she has the face of someone older than that. Gerwig is older — she's 29.…

Summer Guide 2013 Movies

Brent Shepherd — Tue, 28 May 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Brent Shepherd The season of sequels, prequels, franchises, reboots, origin stories, "true" stories and coming-of-age dramedies is now upon us. Both wretched excess and shoestring-budgeted counterprogramming abound.…

Fast & Furious 6

Jason Shawhan — Tue, 21 May 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Jason Shawhan If the entirety of the nitro-burning delirium that is Fast & Furious 6 were just Gina Carano fighting Michelle Rodriguez, it would be the best movie of the year — a new-millennium Faster, Pussycat! Kill!…

Star Trek Into Darkness

Bilge Ebiri — Tue, 14 May 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Bilge Ebiri Star Trek Into Darkness opens, in typical J.J. Abrams style, in medias res, with Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) and Bones McCoy (Karl Urban) running through a bright-red jungle, chased by natives covered in white war paint. Meanwhile, a volcano nearby is about to blow, and Commander Spock (Zachary Quinto) races to stop it.…

To the Wonder

Jim Ridley — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Jim Ridley It's probably best to see Terrence Malick's To the Wonder or any Terrence Malick movie — or any movie, really — with diminished expectations. Two years ago when Malick released The Tree of Life, only the fifth feature film in a career going on four decades, the rapturous reviews produced a critical lock step that kept a lot of viewers away or, worse, sent them in with chips on their shoulders.…

Iron Man 3

Bilge Ebiri — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Bilge Ebiri This will sound like faint praise, but it's something of a wonder that we aren't sick of seeing Robert Downey Jr. suit up as Iron Man. Unlike Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow, whose appearance in even the first, delightful Pirates of the Caribbean film diminishes in the memory with each lame successive installment, Downey's Tony Stark has managed to stay in our good graces. In part, that's because Downey knows how to deliver a joke.…

Trance

Scott Wilson — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Scott Wilson By the time director Danny Boyle sends Rosario Dawson off-camera to shave her hoohah, the only suspense left in his Mad magazine version of Inception is whether he'll show the results. (He does.…

The Place Beyond the Pines

Scott Wilson — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Scott Wilson Director Derek Cianfrance, working from a script co-written with Ben Coccio and Darius Marder, recasts his Blue Valentine star Ryan Gosling (still waiting for one great part) in a daddy-issues version of Crash. The torsion here involves the fated working class, the morally compromised privileged, various legacies of failure and violence ... and some exceptionally odd voice coaching.…

No

Michael Sicinski — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Michael Sicinski Can media change the world? From the radical montage films of post-revolutionary Soviet Russia through Italian neorealism and the Popular Front and the youthful street grammar of 1960s new-wave cinemas in France and Brazil and Czechoslovakia, up to today's guerrilla-video movement in China, there has been no shortage of effort.…

42

Scott Wilson — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Scott Wilson Complaining about a movie's score is like carping about how a game is refereed. Neither music nor officiating ends up mattering all that much if the talent is working.…

The Kansas City FilmFest ups its Q rating, uncovers a gem and brings home a native

Dan Lybarger — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 22:00:00 -0500

Alamo Drafthouse screens several gems at next week's KC FilmFest. by Dan Lybarger This year's KC FilmFest, which runs April 10–14 at the Alamo Drafthouse Mainstreet (14th Street and Main), comes loaded with discoveries — movies neglected or rarely screened or almost entirely unseen. It also offers local audiences a crack at films that have won awards at other festivals.…

On the Road

Scott Wilson — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 22:00:00 -0500

This adaptation of Kerouac is stuck in neutral. by Scott Wilson Bella Swan, Lois Lane and Peggy Olson are doing housework together, catching up. (Mary Jane Watson couldn't make it, but we'll meet her again soon.)…

The Gatekeepers

Jason Shawhan — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 22:00:00 -0500

by Jason Shawhan Nobody has lukewarm opinions about Israeli defense policies. Which means there's plenty of potential audience for Dror Moreh's Oscar-nominated The Gatekeepers, which assembles all surviving heads of the Shin Bet (Israeli Secret Service) and gets down and dirty about social and territorial policy.…