When David Fincher released ""Zodiac"" earlier this year, the bar was raised for psychological crime dramas. ""Zodiac"" was Fincher's best film to date, exhibiting a pitch-perfect atmosphere of unsettling dread and undefined fear.
It was Oscar Wilde who once commented that ""All bad poetry is sincere."" If he were alive today, he might add that all bad feel-good sports movies are sincere, too. ""Pride,"" about James Ellis' (Terrence Howard) African-American swim team in Philadelphia, is as sincere as any of the poets Oscar Wilde was undercutting. And it's just as bad. Good God is this movie boring. It's formulaic, tepid and its aesthetic poverty strips it of any potential affect. ""Pride's"" emotional intelligence is derived not from any great civil rights literature, but from The Wonderful World of Disney's vault of race-related movies.
Todd Field's ""Little Children"" lives and breathes the language of American suburbia—not just the grating drone of daytime chatter, but also the hidden bitterness of lives spent in unhappy marriages, among horrible, sex-starved, pointless people. Like all good satires, it feels closer to the truth than the most precise of photographs. A barely interested narrator, whose monotone voice suggests dull scientific study, provides commentary throughout. The effect is quietly hilarious, like a futile effort to be reasonable and calm.
\The first time we hear Judi Dench in Richard Eyre's adaptation of Zoe Heller's novel ""Notes on a Scandal,"" her voice-over narration laments the belligerence and ignorance of Generation X,"" writes Eric R. Schmidt.'
The National Society of Film Critics, always the most open-minded at awards season, has named Guillermo del Toro's ""Pan's Labyrinth"" the best film of the year. Theirs is a brave selection, and a good one. Few films are so immediately horrifying and comforting, ugly and beautiful. The world needs more movies like this one.
In film criticism, nothing is sacred. And ""The Nativity Story,"" which presents the Biblical account of Jesus' birth, makes some poor artistic decisions.
\'Al Franken: God Spoke' is a blast to watch, but if the filmmakers think they've made a movie arguing for Al Franken's senatorial campaign, they should think again,"" writes Eric R. Schmidt.'
Their father gives two Moroccan children a .270-caliber rifle to go hunt jackals. Once alone on the nearby cliffs, the youngest shoots at a tour bus, seriously wounding an American woman (Cate Blanchett). The nearest hospital is four hours away, so the bus detours to a remote village where her husband (Brad Pitt) begs for aid from the U.S. Embassy. This incident provides the narrative center of Alejandro GonzA¡lez IAA¡rritu's ""Babel.""
""Catch a Fire"" likely won't tell any educated person anything they don't already know about South African apartheid, but it's a powerful film nonetheless. There's a scene where Patrick Chamusso (Derek Luke) screams in anguish at his white captors, telling them whatever they want to hear, and it's an utterly believable, hellish moment. Yes, this movie tries to be about a great historical struggle. Yet it centers on one man doing what he needs to do to stand up for himself and his family.
Everyone has seen Joe Rosenthal's photograph of six American servicemen raising the American flag at Iwo Jima. But contrary to popular belief, the flag was raised at the start of the brutal weeks-long battle. After the Americans had taken the island and Rosenthal's picture had become a great patriotic symbol, three of those immortalized had been killed. The remaining three—Navy Corpsman John Bradley (Ryan Phillippe) and Marines Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach)—were persuaded (perhaps intimidated) to return to the United States for a nationwide tour to convince Americans to buy war bonds. Clint Eastwood's ""Flags of Our Fathers,"" based on the bestselling memoir by James Bradley and Ron Powers, is about the emotional toll this took on these three men.
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