By Aggies, For Aggies
By Brandon Nowalk The great mystery of 2011 is Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, almost a direct rebuttal to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the holiday’s other prestige crime investigation: see how great you can be when your content is as rich as your form? Based on ex-MI6 agent John le Carré’s classic novel about [...]
By Brandon Nowalk 1. The Oscar Candidate: Carnage, in limited release now. Powerhouse cast (Kate Winslet, John C. Reilly), killer director (gender-and-power auteur Roman Polanski), and acclaimed source material (stage show God of Carnage) has me drooling for this Edward Albee-inflected black comedy. The Iron Lady, on the other hand? Meh. 2. The Action Flick: [...]
By Brandon Nowalk The problem with cancer movies is that they’re easy. Instead of earning an emotional journey, we take the shortcut–where our sympathies reflexively kick into high gear as soon as we hear the diagnosis. And then we spend a couple hours getting worse and feeling bad until, victory or death, we get that [...]
By Brandon Nowalk I’m so glad racism is over for America because otherwise The Help would look like a Mickey Mouse band-aid stretched across the oozing gash of a compound fracture. Oh, wait. The point of this grotesque take on white mean girls, the noble magical Negros that raise them, and the old white bourgeoisie [...]
By Brandon Nowalk 1. The Help by Tate Taylor – 1 Star Po black nannies and the white debutante harpies they raised get up to Hilarious Antics and Learn Lessons in this skin-deep feel-good catharsis. Aunt Jemima has more nuance, and more truth about race in America. 2. Rise of the Planet of the Apes [...]
By Brandon Nowalk The studios already launched Fast Five, Thor, and Pirates of the Caribbean in an attempt to start summer early, but I refuse to acknowledge those paltry offerings as the opening ceremony of cinema’s three-month funfest. Lucky for us all, Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class opens on June 3. The film looks like [...]
By Brandon Nowalk Like an immortality-seeking cougar whose plastic surgery is finally catching up to her, the latest episode of the children’s adventure serial Pirates of the Caribbean is grotesquely distorted with just enough flashes of former beauty to justify the inevitable sequel. At World’s End set the bar so low that all Rob Marshall [...]
By Brandon Nowalk It’s safe to come out, Scream fans. It took a decade for the stink of the bloated, pointless Scream 3 to finally wash out of Ghostface’s dimestore costume, but the franchise is back for a reboot with new self-aware teens and contemporary horror tropes. What a decade it was, with the Saw/Hostel [...]
By Brandon Nowalk Duncan Jones’ Source Code is so middle-of-the-road that it’s hard to muster much passion one way or the other. It has ideas, but it barely addresses them. It’s pretty but undistinguished. It’s a fun thriller with a happy ending determined not to ruffle a single feather from even the most cynical. There [...]
By Brandon Nowalk More movies should be 64 minutes long. Turkey Bowl packs ten individual characters and a knotty, universal story into that running time with a fleet pace and a light touch that belies its bittersweet impact. You barely have time to register your investment until the credits roll and you’re faced with the [...]