Opening This Week: Biutiful Now Playing In Select Cities - For a movie about dying, there should be a glimmer of joy or hope on display—if only around the story's edges or in solitary moments—to establish the beauty of living. "Biutiful" is an acting tour de force on Javier Bardem's part, wrenching more for his performance than for a story that otherwise seems a little too cluttered, unformed, and familiar. The Mechanic An ability to suspend disbelief is typical of films like "The Mechanic," but things should at least be rooted in a version of reality. If the film doesn't exactly offer action aficionados anything they haven't seen before, it does at least separate itself a little with its astoundingly dark mean streak. The Rite For all of the hope that it misleadingly stirs up and all of the hogwash it ultimately becomes, "The Rite" is a sizable disappointment, a film that somewhere on its journey from written page to finished product has been stripped of its initially cerebral leanings for a dopey, excessively conventional lighting and effects horror show. |
© 2011 Dustin Putman |
Friday, January 28, 2011
This week at the movies..
