April 22, 2011
Critics Consensus: Water for Elephants Is A Little Soapy
This week at the movies we've got a big-top romance (Water for Elephants, starring Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson); a maternal fixer (Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family, starring Loretta Devine and Bow Wow), and familial felines (African Cats, narrated by Samuel L. Jackson). What do the critics have to say? Nowadays, the word "melodrama" is mostly used pejoratively, but it wasn't always so: melodramas were the stock-in-trade of great directors like George Cukor and Douglas Sirk. However, we live in more cynical times, and critics say the Depression-set Water for Elephants has an evocative sense of its time and place but lacks the burning passions required to pull off this type of romantic weepie.
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April 22, 2011
10 Movies to Watch For at Tribeca
By our count, there's well over 100 feature length movies playing between April 20 and May 1 at the Tribeca Film Festival. That's plenty to keep track of, especially considering you are probably one of the many not even lucky enough to be in New York at this time of year. Our list below is still of use to you: these are the 10 movies we're most anticipating to see, and the ones we believe that will have the most impact at the festival and definitely beyond that.
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May 16, 2009
Cannes 2009: Gambit and Silk Spectre Go Bang Bang
This morning's press reception for The Bang Bang Club in Cannes was rather affected by the conspicuous absence of the film's main star, Ryan Phillippe, who pulled out at the last minute due to illness, making it a slightly quieter affair than many had expected. But what the press who didn't attend missed out on were co-stars Malin Akerman and Taylor Kitsch, who introduced the film with director Steven Silver and sat down with Rotten Tomatoes to tell us more. The project, which has just wrapped principal photography, is the tale of a group of photojournalists in post-Apartheid South Africa who risked their lives to take some of the most iconic warzone imagery in severely troubled times.
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