Scott Renshaw | Stories

THE GREAT GATSBY

Literary Criticism: Baz Luhrmann’s problem is more than not showing proper respect for The Great Gatsby.

What if Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby didn’t have to carry the burden of The Great Gatsby? That’s not just some Zen koan-like riddle intended to inspire deep meditation; it’s a question about the way ...

Olympus Has Fallen

Channeling Die Hard Olympus Has Fallen shows what that other action franchise is missing.

Sure, I may be a film critic – but I’m also an American. I’ve got my pride in our nation’s accomplishments, and I don’t like seeing its institutions in peril. Which is why Olympus Has ...

Chicken With Plums

Strung Along: Chicken With Plums conjures painful sweetness in the life and death of an Iranian violinist.

For more than an hour, Chicken With Plums looks like it’s going to be a case study in terminal levels of preciousness. Then, improbably, directors Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud bring it back from the ...

The Master

I Will Follow: One powerful relationship – not an assault on Scientology – fuels the extraordinary The Master.

Is Paul Thomas Anderson’s hauntingly intimate epic The Master about Scientology? That’s been the focus of attention for many with only peripheral interest in the film itself, hoping perhaps for some kind of searing roman-a-clef ...

Inception

Presents of Mind: Christopher Nolan gives the gift of another brainy blockbuster with

For weeks – nay, months – I played along with the coy refusals by writer/director Christopher Nolan and the cast members of Inception to reveal too much about its premise. I resisted the urge to ...

THE TWILIGHT SAGA - ECLIPSE

Bloodless Wonder: Bringing in a horror director still doesn’t make

They keep trying, the producers of the Twilight films; you’ve got to give them that. For 2008’s Twilight, they hired Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen) to direct, suggesting they were aiming for edgy teen drama. Then they ...

Toy Story 3

We Are Family: Toy Story 3 soars on the wonderful heartbreak of intimate connection, a compelling account of the joys, and difficulties, of letting go.

“You’ve got a friend in me,” go the lyrics to the Randy Newman tune that has been crooned in all of Pixar’s magical Toy Story films, including the brand-new Toy Story 3. It’s a catchy ...

Shrek Forever After

Just Like Starting Ogre: Shrek Forever After throws out the films’ history – and it’s an improvement.

Many of us have suspected it all along, but with Shrek Forever After, it becomes official: The Shrek film series is actually a sitcom. Since time immemorial – okay, since the late ’70s – there ...

Babies

Natal Habitat: Babies observes cultural differences – and overly-precious cuteness.

In the new French-produced documentary Babies, the filmmakers attempt to observe the many unique cultural components of early childhood development and parenting by… Oh look at that one play with the goat! Isn’t that just ...

The Men Who Stare At Goats

True Lies: 'The Men Who Stare at Goats' succeeds at silliness but fails at journalism.

“More of this story is true than you would believe,” reads the caption at the beginning of The Men Who Stare at Goats, but let’s be real: No one involved in this movie goes on ...

District 9

Illegal Aliens: District 9 is a sci-fi allegory with political pretensions.

It’s worth noting that co-writer/director Neill Blomkamp sets District 9’s pivotal event – the arrival of a derelict alien spacecraft over Johannesburg, South Africa, leaving more than a million extraterrestrial refugees – in the 1980s. ...

Julie & Julia

Hail to the Chef: Meryl Streep cooks up a great performance, but Julie & Julia lacks spice.

It only took 30 years, but Meryl Streep has done it: She’s the queen of summer movies. I know: the audacity, right? This is the time of year, after all, when youth is supposed to ...

Julie&Julia

Hail to the Chef: Meryl Streep cooks up a great performance, but Julie&Julia lacks spice.

It only took 30 years, but Meryl Streep has done it: She’s the queen of summer movies. I know: the audacity, right? This is the time of year, after all, when youth is supposed to ...

(500) Days of Summer

The One That Got Away: Zooey Deschanel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt shine in (500) Days of Summer.

Movies, as a rule, are not particularly introspective about the building blocks of romantic relationships. And if that’s true of movies as a rule, when it comes to romantic comedies, that rule has pretty much ...

The Ugly Truth

Sally Forced: The Ugly Truth is that an uptight heroine doesn’t make a romantic comedy.

Twenty years ago American moviegoers were introduced to Sally Albright in When Harry Met Sally. As played by Meg Ryan, she was a sunny but tightly-wound city girl who found a perfect foil in loosey-goosey ...

Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince

Half-Blood Prince follows a Harry Potter who’s no innocent kid any more.

“You need a shave,” says Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) to Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) during a late scene in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – and damned if there isn’t a trace of stubble ...

Public Enemies

The Ice Mann Cometh: Public Enemies showcases its director’s chilly, but undeniable, skills.

Michael Mann deserves major gratitude from me for one thing: Thanks to him, I finally understand what apparently frustrated so many people about Stanley Kubrick. Frankly, I’ve never grasped the cult of Mann over the ...

The Proposal

Love Formula: Sandra Bullock, Ryan Reynolds provide familiar charm in The Proposal

The modern Hollywood romantic comedy can only be made so many ways – and in all likelihood, every one of them has been made already. You need a reason why the protagonists initially can’t stand ...

Angels&Demons

Cardinal Sin: In Angels&Demons, everyone once again takes Dan Brown way too seriously.

Dan Brown gets a bad rap for his unique brand of beach-reading literature, but maybe he just should have been born 60 years earlier. If his work was going to be turned into cinema, it ...

Angels & Demons

Cardinal Sin: In Angels & Demons, everyone once again takes Dan Brown way too seriously.

Dan Brown gets a bad rap for his unique brand of beach-reading literature, but maybe he just should have been born 60 years earlier. If his work was going to be turned into cinema, it ...

Star Trek

Going Boldly: J. J. Abrams’ energetic Star Trek embraces some astral history, and throws some away.

You tell me, Trekkers and Trekkies: more than 40 years since its inception, what does the Star Trek “brand” mean, anyway? Director J. J. Abrams has let it be known in publicity interviews that he ...

X-Men: Wolverine

The Dark Not: X-Men Origins: Wolverine offers gritty violence, but does it matter?

Hard though it may be to believe, it’s been 20 years since we collectively decided to re-define the superhero movie. Tim Burton’s Batman was risky at the time, incorporating elements from the comic-book innovators of ...

Earth

Planet News: Earth tries to make the familiar thrilling – with only sporadic success.

Sixty years ago, Disney blazed the trail for nature filmmaking. It seems kind of unfair that today, the company seems like it’s bringing up the rear. While the new big-screen documentary Earth marks the launch ...

17 Again

Zac to the Future: Another young star tries on a familiar generic premise in 17 Again.

You may wonder why it was necessary to add 17 Again to Hollywood’s long list of “body swap” comedies over the last 25 years, but I have a theory. At some point in the rise ...

Observe and Report

Oaf Course: Seth Rogen takes a detour from what works in Observe and Report.

At some time in the career of every screen comedian, there comes a point where he has to make peace with The Character. Adam Sandler is The Man-Child Knucklehead. Vince Vaughn is The Tightly-Wound Motor-Mouth. ...

ADVENTURELAND

Carny Complications: Romance/nostalgia bloom on the midway in Adventureland.

Some will hear the first guitar blast during Adventureland’s opening moments, and think nothing of it. For others, The Replacements’ “Bastards of Young” is such a touchstone that writer/director Greg Mottola (Superbad) may have you ...

Monsters vs. Aliens

Don’t Worry, “B” Happy: Monsters vs. Aliens avoids Pixar comparison by wallowing in genre pleasures.

Creature features, alien invasions, 3-D gimmickry – from start to finish, Monsters vs. Aliens celebrates some of the staples of the 1950s “B-movie.” And in a way that’s perfectly fitting, because maybe it’s time to ...

Friday the 13th

Slash-Back: Friday the 13th revisits the screams – and the laughs – of the vintage ’80s horror classic.

Quick pop-culture pop-quiz: What iconic item appears exactly zero times in the original 1980 Friday the 13th? If you guessed “a hockey mask,” give yourself a few more course credits towards your degree in slasherology. ...

Frost/Nixon

Entertaining Bout: Don’t take Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon too seriously.

At this time of year, critics spend a lot of time watching dramas battling to prove that they have enough gravitas to deserve year-end awards. They tell stories of great people and/or great historical moments; ...

The Wrestler

Body Slammed: A battered Mickey Rourke returns as a washed-up fighter in The Wrestler.

“The ’90s f – king sucked,” observes Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Mickey Rourke) at one point in The Wrestler. He’s referring specifically to the music – how “that pussy Kurt Cobain” killed the era of ...

Australia

Continental Drift: One epic-scale story isn’t enough for Baz Luhrmann’s Australia.

Because he’s working as an artist in the 21st century, Baz Luhrmann makes movies. But let there be no doubt: If not for this fluke of history, he’d be creating operas. Or maybe it’s more ...

Quantum of Solace.

The Dark Knight: James Bond remains conflicted in Quantum of Solace.

Once upon a time, in the 20th century, James Bond was a superhero. He went into space; he drove cars that turned into submarines; he fought villains who used lasers, and who had henchmen with ...

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Motley Crude: Kevin Smith’s arrested adolescence continues in Zack and Miri Make a Porno.

If you’re Kevin Smith, you’ve got to be looking at Judd Apatow’s movie comedy empire and thinking, “Dude, what the f***k?” It must seem kind of unfair. After all, Smith paved the way 14 years ...

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist

Puppy Love: Peter Sollett again captures teen romance’s sweet awkwardness in Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist.

It took five years for director Peter Sollett to follow up his sparkling feature debut Raising Victor Vargas with his adaptation of Rachel Cohn and David Levithan’s novel, Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist. And while ...

Lakeview Terrace

Rough Neighborhood: Lakeview Terrace stars Samuel L. Jackson as a neighbor from hell.

It took Lakeview Terrace to remind me, in retrospect, that we didn’t know how good we had it in the early 1990s. The Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall had crumbled, leaving post-Cold War America ...

The Rocker

Career Encore: The Office’s Rainn Wilson gets a second chance to be a drummer in The Rocker.

In everyone’s life, there comes a time when– for the sake of his sanity and long-term happiness– he must come to terms with his place in the world. The high school football second-stringer must understand ...

Tropic Thunder

Silly Salvo: Ben Stiller abandons subtle satire for broad gags in Tropic Thunder.

Ben Stiller is not a subtle guy. On his short-lived, self-titled Fox comedy series in 1992, Stiller oversaw some terrific satire, but the style was often broad. In the decade since he became a household ...

Pineapple Express

High Times: Pineapple Express takes a funny but unfocused stroll through 1970s cinema.

Like Ric Ocasek and Paulina Porizkova, the match just did not compute. Screenwriters Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg were part of the Judd Apatow comedy stable, the guys behind the broader-than-the-Mississippi comedy of Superbad. Director ...

Step Brothers

R-rested Development: The vulgar immaturity of Step Brothers’ main characters extends to the filmmaking.

Brennan Huff (Will Ferrell) and Dale Doback (John C. Reilly) are 40-year-old losers, unemployed and still living at home with their respective single parents (Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins) when those parents meet and decide ...

The Dark Knight

Unbalanced Ledger: The Dark Knight delivers more than a menacing farewell performance.

Here is the ugly truth nobody at Warner Bros. can possibly utter aloud: The death of Heath Ledger will be good for The Dark Knight’s bottom line. Make no mistake, the movie was going to ...

Wall-E

Love Bot: In the lyrical WALL-E, a machine teaches humanity how to re-discover beauty.

For 700 years, WALL-E– a Waste Allocation Load Lifter robot, Earth Class– has been doing the job he was programmed to do. Left behind on an Earth no longer inhabitable by humans, the solar-powered WALL-E ...

Get Smart

Losing Control: Get Smart gets stupid by following the template of the ’60s television series too closely.

As a 21st-century American over the age of six, I understand that the answer to why Hollywood does anything is almost always “money.” For example, why would a studio launch a movie version of “Get ...

The Incredible Hulk

Take Two: The second-big screen adaptation of The Incredible Hulk rekindles the spirit of a mediocre TV series.

In an effort, perhaps, to exorcise the sense of failure surrounding Ang Lee’s 2003 film version of Hulk– which did a monster opening weekend then promptly circled the box-office drain– most of the roles in ...

Kung Fu Panda

Chop Shop: The animated martial arts movie Kung Fu Panda invests a familiar formula with uncommon fun.

It has been fascinating to observe the rise of computer-generated animation– in particular, watching so much imagination invested in technical innovation that everyone has apparently decided to share the same plot. You know the one: ...

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Past Imperfect: Nostalgia trumps imagination and joy in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Yes, Harrison Ford is 65 years old. There’s a gauntness to his cheeks these days, and a steely grey to both the hair on his head and the stubble on his chin. But when he ...

The Chronicles of Narnia

Load of the Rings: The Chronicles of Narnia series are bound to be unfavorably compared with another recent fantasy trilogy.

The filmmakers behind the The Chronicles of Narnia adaptations not only face the challenge of maintaining fidelity to the much-loved C.S. Lewis books, but they walk in the long shadow cast by another fantasy saga. ...

Made Of Honor

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