With the broad rubbing hornily against the observant, the clear-eyed ‘Adventureland’ views an awkward age with fondness and well-aged shame.
It’s messy and too telegraphed, but ‘Thirst’ employs vampirism probingly, is anchored by two great performances, and is disgustingly funny.
Primally repulsive and sad, ‘Grace’ is an honest, thorough metaphor for early motherhood, and clever and light with its icky cryptic horrors
‘Drag Me to Hell’ has expert touches (the handkerchief/car bit) but Raimi mostly revels in fun, repulsive, throwaway visual/aural aggression
Stripping the vampire flick of baroque affectations, del Toro’s ‘Cronos’ is simple but rich, concerned with addiction, corruption, and aging
While I still don’t really understand the Twitter phenomenon, I’ve loved using the 140-character limit for extreme forced concision. The aim is always to pack these ridiculously short reviews with enough meaning that I don’t feel guilty about never writing more about a particular movie or television show. I would never say that 140 characters is sufficient to discuss much of anything – let alone a feature film – but it’s a great if arbitrary writing exercise: How much can you say within Twitter’s confines? For the most part, I’ve been happy with the results. But with Tell No One, I feel that I need to explain myself.
‘Duplicity’ revels in triviality. Corporate intrigue in movies is serious business, but here everything is light, and romance fits right in.
Zombie’s ‘Halloween’ purveys trite backstory, poorly mimics iconic moments, and jacks up the T&A, but it finds in its final moments a voice.
Teasing with odd, existential potential, the tight French thriller ‘Tell No One’ sadly picks a worn, logical path. A lovely ending, though.
‘Flight of the Conchords S2’ shows what happens when your great ideas got used up the first time. Often amusing but random and kinda stupid.
