| Critic |
Review |
Quote |
Analysis |
This Week's Verdict |
Owen Gleiberman,
Entertainment Weekly |
World Trade Center |
"As a tribute to those who died, and survived, on Sept. 11, World Trade Center is a scrupulous and honorable film. Yet it never comes close to being a revelatory one; it sentimentalizes more than it haunts... [United 93]'s brilliance was the way it undermined your defenses by restaging 9/11 with the electric realism of live media. To know what occurred, or might have occurred, on that plane, and to see it as if it was happening before your eyes, fed a need that was at once journalistic, patriotic, and wildly cinematic. It was exactly the sort of film you might have expected Oliver Stone to make, but World Trade Center isn't a great Stone film; it's more like a decent Ron Howard film." |
Leave Splash out of this! |
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Armond White,
New York Press |
Half Nelson |
"Half Nelson represents the latest, post-wigger version of Norman Mailer's White Negro formulation in which hipsters project their anxieties and lusts upon figures of black deprivation. Trapped in this patronizing concept, Drey lacks the spontaneity and depth seen in the superb Akeelah and the Bee; a non-patronizing view of a black teen's aspiration and how it reflects a community's ethos. Drey is not even permitted the natural emotion of a schoolgirl crush by finding Dunne cute — which he is given Gosling's Colin Farrell-scruffiness and sleepy, pleading eyes." |
In typical fashion, through the course of this review Armond manages to dismiss Samuel L. Jackson (again), The Believer, and City of God, while praising Elia Kazan, Martin Ritt, Pat Conroy and Stanley Kramer. But somehow, it's his most restrained — and insightful — one in years. |
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Ella Taylor,
LA Weekly |
World Trade Center |
"With the exception of the brilliantly nuanced Salvador, almost every movie Oliver Stone has made has driven me up the wall in one way or another, whether it be his yen for conspiracy, his cult of hypermasculinity, or his vulgar Marxism and inability to draw distinctions between degrees of evil in the corridors of American power. Stone may be the bluntest instrument in Hollywood's arsenal, but watching his new film about the collapse of the Twin Towers, I found myself nostalgic for his chutzpah." |
Arrgh! Talk about damned if you do, damned if you don't. Let's get this straight: Oliver Stone's chutzpah makes him insufferable, but she misses it when it's not there? Who says critics are jaded and always wanting to have it both ways? |
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Kyle Smith,
New York Post |
Step Up |
"The blocky Tatum (ears by Prince Charles, facial expressions by Rocky Balboa) is likeable enough, and Dewan, who looks like Paula Abdul Jr. (and has danced with Janet Jackson), is a honey with more cute outfits than the September issue of Lucky. The actors do their own dancing, which makes their routines bright and convincing. There's none of that cheesy Flashdance fakery (close-up on her face! Close-up on her feet! Now we see her whole body but the light is so poor that you can't make out her face!)." |
Somehow, we don't think authenticity is what Step Up was aiming for... but it's nice to know they achieved it. Actually, Smith's pan turns out to be one of those fun little diss-jobs that make us want to actually see the film. |
|
J. Hoberman,
The Village Voice |
The Descent |
"Lunacy may be an ideological argument, but this cavorting, copulating chorus of mindless meat puppets provides the full [Jan] Svankmajer flavor — as well as a comic metaphor for human existence itself." |
"Hmm. "Mindless meat puppets"? This sounds not unlike Step Up." |
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