The Paperboy opens Friday in select theaters (see times below) Our rating: Gators get cut open, John Cusack drops the N-word, Nicole Kidman pees on somebody and Macy Gray pretends to masturbate on the floor. The Paperboy is a messy and sensationalistic tabloid thriller from Lee Daniels, in which Zac Efron plays the kid brother […]
Nathan Gelgud
Bio: N.C. State graduate Nathan Gelgud lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., and writes about film. He also does film-inspired illustrations.Twitter: http://twitter.com/gelgud
Posted inFilm & Television
A weird family down under in Eye of the Storm
Eye of the Storm opens Friday (see times below) Our rating: In Eye of the Storm, an eccentric brother and sister kill time at their homestead in Australia while they wait for their sickly, wealthy motherwho wears a variety of pastel wigsto decide who goes in her will. Judy Davis is in it. So is […]
Posted inFilm & Television
The last days of Marie Antoinette, through the eyes of a devoted servant
Farewell, My Queen Opens Friday Chelsea, Colony When Farewell, My Queen opens, it’s Bastille Day before there was a Bastille Day: July 14, 1789, in Versailles. In other words, the shit is officially about to hit the fan. Marie Antoinette, of course, is in the mood for something frivolous. The queen (Diane Kruger) has sent […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Safety Not Guaranteed raises low-key and worthwhile questions
Safety Not Guaranteed opens Friday in select theaters (see times below) Our rating: Safety Not Guaranteed is low-key and worthwhile, and it raises some low-key and worthwhile questions. Can someone who is very serious about something laughably eccentric be treated with respect? How far can a movie dissociate itself from its plot’s reason for existing […]
Posted inFilm & Television
The guileless Amazing Spider-Man never gets its guard up
The Amazing Spider-Man is now playing (see times below) Our rating: According to police chief Captain Stacy (Denis Leary), the latest on-screen iteration of Spider-Man isn’t a vigilante but an anarchist. If only! While the adolescent web-slinger does rough up a few cops (though hardly enough for my taste), invoking the idea of an anarchist […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Woody Allen’s To Rome with Love explores that whole sad clown thing
To Rome with Love opens Friday in select theaters (see times below) Our rating: Woody Allen’s screenplays find their origins in a drawer full of scribbled notes, but the four seemingly unrelated stories that make up To Rome with Love are not random scrap paper ideas. Instead, they are explorations of the themes of Ruggero […]
Posted inCulture
Critical resistance is futile! The Amazing Spider-Man opens today
Courtesy of CTMG./ImageMagickSpidey and Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN*** starsOpens today According to police chief Captain Stacy (Denis Leary), the latest on-screen iteration of Spider-Man isn’t a vigilante, but an anarchist. If only! While the adolescent web-slinger does rough up a few cops (though hardly enough for my taste), invoking the idea of […]
Posted inCulture
A stud is born: Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike is stately
Photo by Claudette Barius/ Warner BrosMatthew McConaughey shows what long, tedious hours in the gym can do. MAGIC MIKE*** starsOpens today “This is not a joke!” shouts a bare-chested, protective goggle-wearing Dallas as he holds a lit torch on the stage of Xquisite, a male strip club. Well, Dallas might not be joking, but thanks […]
Posted inFilm & Television
A benign, cozy world in Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom
Moonrise Kingdom opens Friday throughout the Triangle (see times below) Our rating: Wes Anderson has a good problem, like having too many houses, running out of space at your dinner party or being mistaken for George Clooney. He has created a fully realized world unto himself, but his world is so complete that it’s impenetrable. […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Forget the intellectual pretensions of Prometheus, it’s all about the gore
Prometheus opens Friday throughout the Triangle (see times below) Our rating: It took three years, but the world of big budget sci-fi finally has an antidote to the phony spiritualism and New Age warmth of Avatar. Instead of trafficking in the excitement of vicarious living through superior beings, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus trades in the poisonous […]