Metro Pulse

Countless films have dealt with similar subject matter and the attendant moral implications—that hatred and bigotry are parasites that leech the essence of human spirit, that good people must be ever wary of the evil that lives in human hearts. The Nazi regime provides a particularly pointed illustration, irresistible to filmmakers and fabulists alike, of why these truths are eternal. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas dutifully strikes the proper notes, in that respect, and it does so effectively. Full story »

When 2006’s Casino Royale ends, British secret agent James Bond (Daniel Craig) is in agony over the betrayal and suicide of his lover, Vesper. When Quantum of Solace begins, he is still consumed by past events, but his duty to country continues, leading him to an international group of criminals named Quantum, which he finds to have infiltrated the exclusive circle of agents run by his boss, M (Judi Dench). Now Bond is so determined to root out the head of Quantum, he can’t even kill straight. Full story »

When a new Mike Leigh film appears called Happy-Go-Lucky, you’d assume that it’s an ironic title. It’s not, exactly—the phrase provides a perfect description of the movie’s protagonist, Poppy, an effervescent 30-year-old London schoolteacher played with exquisite and delicate intensity by Sally Hawkins—but it does downplay the serious way that Leigh uses her story to examine just what happiness is, and how it works. Full story »

Changeling, the new film produced and directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Angelina Jolie, begins and ends in much the same way. The perspective is high above a colorless Los Angeles street in the late 1920s, Model A Fords trundling along it. The music behind is a muted trumpet, playing a sparse and tentative line. In between those bookends are nearly two-and-a-half hours of story, with only a slight improvement in hue. Full story »

Albuquerque’s East High is the best high school in the world because Zac Efron goes there. What’s more, it’s the setting for High School Musical 3. But East High’s favorite basketball champ Troy Bolton (Efron) has a problem: It’s senior year, and he’s questioning his future. All of his friends know exactly what they want, but Troy, not so much. To add suckage to lameness, his beautiful, turning-the-world-on-with-her-smile girlfriend Gabriella Montez (Vanessa Hudgens) is going to college a thousand miles away (literally) while he’s expected to stay in town to be a college basketball star at his father’s alma mater. Thing is, when Troy raises his arms to catch a pass, he doesn’t know whether he’s doing it to score the winning basket for the team, or if he’s preparing to make perfectly posed jazz hands. What’s his real passion? Could his coach/dad ever understand? God a’mighty, could Zac Efron be any prettier? Full story »

Right from the get-go, there’s a problem with making a relatively straight movie about George W. Bush, especially without the aid of a few post-presidency buffer-zone years. Never mind the fiasco of a war or the breakdown of Democratic checks and balances that he has left in his wake. He is, and always has been, kind of a joke as a character. The 43rd president, as middle-of-the-road comedians have proven ad nauseum since he took office, is tailor-made for broad slapstick, from the ever-present, vaguely confused look in his eyes to his famous grammatical slip-ups to his phony, over-the-top Texas machismo. How can you make a movie about this man, at this point in history, without slipping into parody or preachiness? Full story »

Imagine a society living in shadow, a place where corruption rules, infrastructure is failing, and cynicism replaces hope in the minds of its citizens. No, we’re not talking about America at the end of the second Bush term here; rather, we’re talking about Ember, the namesake city of the new film from director Gil Kenan. Full story »

Michael Cera desperately needs a way to escape typecasting, or at least to avoid saturation. He doesn’t quite get it in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, an iPod-generation mash-up of the road movie, the romantic teen comedy, and the rock ’n’ roll midnight-show cult classic in which Cera plays essentially the same character he’s always played. Full story »

After two consecutive universally acclaimed, multiple-award-winning films—2002’s City of God and The Constant Gardener from 2005—Fernando Mereilles was perhaps due for a letdown. And his latest movie, Blindness, is certainly a drop-off—less focused, occasionally over-stylized, and, at times, difficult to watch. But it’s far from a failure. Full story »

One of filmed media’s great comic inventions was Deputy Barney Fife, The Andy Griffith Show’s bumbling foil to Griffith’s own straight-laced Sheriff Andy Taylor. The combination of the series’ brilliantly eccentric scripts and the equally marvelous characterization of the late Don Knotts made it easy to overlook the fact that never in a million years would you actually want this man protecting you. Full story »

Burn, written while the Coen brothers were making the Best Picture-winning No Country for Old Men, is a ludicrous, one-joke farce, and that tone is reflected in its one-dimensional characters. Still, for all its silliness and nihilism—and because of them—Burn is surprising, insightful, and hilarious throughout. Full story »

Nicolas Cage plays Joe, a cold, opportunistic gun for hire who, we’re told, is among the best in the business. Joe, who has no backstory and no last name (to maximize his mystique or because the filmmakers are shamefully lazy?), does have some very obvious pieces of advice for any prospective hitmen out there, and those are used as the framework for the movie: “(1) Don’t ask questions; (2) There is no right and wrong; (3) Don’t take an interest in people outside of work; and (4) Know when to get out and walk away rich.” Full story »

The trouble with director Jeffrey Nachmanoff’s Traitor is that its political observations are blindingly, painfully obvious, and, for nearly two-thirds of the film, they obscure the simple pleasures of what could have been a perfectly fine double-agent story. Full story »

“Mildly entertaining” is the kiss of box-office death these days. We live in an extreme era and we demand extreme entertainment at our movie theaters: spectacles of mass destruction featuring all-powerful heroes, super-villains, and occasionally Robert Downey Jr. Case in point is The Rocker, an earnest comedy starting Rainn Wilson as a past-his-prime drummer who gets a second chance to rock in his nephew’s high-school emo band. It’s cute. It has a few laughs. The characters are mostly likable. And you won’t stop wondering why you’re not watching it on the USA Network instead of in a theater. Full story »

Over the last five or six years, the entertainment industry has become absolutely obsessed with young people. Everywhere you look, there’s a new movie or television show trying its best to get inside the minds of teenagers and unearth their hopes, fears, and motivations. Just think of the last year or two: we’ve had Juno, Superbad, High School Musical, Gossip Girl, and The Secret Life of the American Teenager. It’s like filmmakers and network executives can’t get enough of us and our supposedly wild shenanigans. Full story »