All articles by Brent Simon – Page 11
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Reviews
Eagle Eye
Dir: D.J. Caruso. US. 2008. 117 mins.A slickly-packaged yet ultimately-unpersuasive political action thriller, Eagle Eye collapses under the weight of various story incongruities, in large part because its sprawling, conspiratorial plot and mode of storytelling don't ever fully align. A re-teaming of Disturbia director D.J. Caruso and star Shia Labeouf, ...
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Reviews
Righteous Kill
Dir: Jon Avnet. US. 2008. 100 mins.Screen legends Robert De Niro and Al Pacino team up with director Jon Avnet in Righteous Kill, a thinly-sketched, utterly pedestrian cop thriller that pivots on a very predictable twist ending. An unworthy vehicle for its stars' talents, the movie plays like an episodic ...
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Reviews
Lakeview Terrace
Dir: Neil LaBute. US. 2008. 110 mins.Neil LaBute takes his best commercial swing yet with Lakeview Terrace, a solidly-constructed drama of suburban friction and unrest that only fully yields to genre convention in its final, wild, ten minutes. While not enough of a straightforward thriller to attract widescale younger audiences, ...
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Reviews
Disaster Movie
Dirs: Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer. US. 2008. 87mins.Spoof film-makers Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer hit rock bottom in the creatively bankrupt Disaster Movie, a poorly staged, entirely laugh-free big screen exercise that, despite its name, is not really a genre spoof at all, but rather merely an excuse to poke ...
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Reviews
Mirrors (2007)
Dir: Alexandre Aja. US. 2008. 111mins.Mirrors tries to blend conventional horror with dark, allegorical thriller in this film about a washed-up policeman targeted by evil mirrors but pulls off neither very effectively. French film-maker Alexandre Aja, quickly becoming the go-to director for down-and-dirty horror remakes, hits all the keys hard ...
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Reviews
Fly Me To The Moon
Dir: Ben Stassen. US. 2008. 85 mins.The first computer-generated animated feature conceived and produced exclusively for a 3-D release, Fly Me to the Moon also represents one of the strangest misfires in recent animation history. The story of three young flies who stow away on the Apollo 11 space flight, ...
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Reviews
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2
Dir: Sanaa Hamri. US. 2008. 118 mins.A sequel to the 2005 big-screen adaptation of Ann Brashares' novel about a quartet of young girls who discover a pair of jeans that mysteriously fits each of them perfectly, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 is a painted-within-the-lines drama that skates by ...
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Reviews
Space Chimps
Dir: Kirk De Micco. US. 2008. 81 mins.An amiable animated tale in which a group of chimpanzees is sent to a faraway planet to test its viability for life but ends up freeing an enslaved alien populace, Space Chimps is, in terms of plotting, a throwback to the animation of ...
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Reviews
Hancock
Dir: Peter Berg. US. 2008. 92 mins.A fun, fairly crisp opening hour gives way to a muddled, entirely unsatisfying ending in the action-comedy Hancock, which finds Will Smith starring as a sullen superhero trying to win over the population of Los Angeles via a very public makeover. Smith's first summer ...
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Reviews
The Love Guru
Dir: Marco Schnabel. US. 2008. 86 mins.The Love Guru 's rascally self-help guru who needs to learn to love himself may be Mike Myers' first original big-screen character in a long while, but he still feels familiar. Trading in Myers' favoured trademark steady diet of scatological humour, outlandish asides and ...
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Reviews
The Strangers
Dir: Bryan Bertino. US. 2008. 85 mins.Bryan Bertino's debut feature The Strangers is an effectively grim, exceedingly well-made horror thriller. Wringing atmospheric tension out of the familiar set-up of a besieged young couple, the movie mixes pulse-pounding scenes of explicit menace with stalking scenarios more rooted in sustained dread. Opening ...
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Reviews
The Foot Fist Way
Dir: Jody Hill. US. 2008. 87 mins.Ascendant US funnyman Danny McBride stars in this comedy about a small-town martial arts instructor - an amiable but meandering tale that wears out both its threadbare premise and welcome long before the end of its running time. The Foot Fist Way (the title ...
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Reviews
Superhero Movie
Dir: Craig Mazin. US. 2008. 86 mins.For the most part a dispiriting, tedious send-up of superhero story cliches, Superhero Movie starts out with a full head of steam but quickly flags, struggling to fill out both its costume and its running time. Like the worst of its downmarket, quick-buck spoof ...
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Reviews
Leatherheads
Dir: George Clooney. US. 2008. 113 mins.Part screwball romance, part sports comedy, George Clooney's third film behind the camera, the period piece Leatherheads, goes back to the early days of American professional football. Loose-limbed, loquacious and exceedingly affable, the movie finally comes unglued in the final third, when forced to ...
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Reviews
Doomsday
Dir: Neil Marshall. US. 2008. 109 minsWritten and directed by Neil Marshall, Doomsday is reformulated post-apocalyptic genre pap, plain and simple. It's also devoid of narrative ambition, atrociously staged, full of baffling incongruities, and not much fun to boot.Obviously pitched at fans of the popular Resident Evil series and 28 ...
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Reviews
Semi-Pro
Dir: Kent Alterman. US. 2008. 91 mins.Characteristically anarchic, loosely structured and unabashedly blue, Will Ferrell's new comedy Semi-Pro ably skewers both second-tier professional basketball and the regrettable fashion of the early 1970s, ranking in the top half of the comedian's roster of sports parodies (a list which includes Kicking and ...