Movie Reviews

Movie Reviews
Reader
Starring: Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes Review: Delicate business is being transacted here concerning the nature of guilt, legal and moral. OK, that should scare off the action-junkie crowd. Now we can talk. Director Stephen Daldry and playwright David Hare, collaborators on The Hours, have done something profoundly right in bringing Bernhard Schlink’s controversial German novel to the screen: They’ve made it personal. What if the person you love turns out to be a monster? That question arises when 15-year-old virgin Michael Berg (David Kross) starts a summer affair in postwar Berlin with tram conductor Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet). After sex, Michael reads to her from the works of literary giants, and then this older woman who calls him Kid disappears. Eight years later, Michael, now a law student, finds Hanna again, revealed as a… Rating: 3 Stars
Gran Torino
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Christopher Carley, Bee Vang, Bee Vang, Brian Hal… Review: Clint Eastwood has hinted that his role as bigoted Korean War veteran Walt Kowalski — a gun-toting widower living in Detroit near the struggling Ford auto plant and even nearer to the Asian immigrants crowding him out of his run-down, racially mixed hood — may be his last role as an actor. Eastwood, 78, has two Oscars for directing Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby, and two nominations for starring in them. But an Oscar for acting? Not yet. Get busy, Academy. I don’t think Eastwood will ever turn down a juicy role. But Gran Torino, named after the 1972 car that Walt garages and polishes like a symbol of his idealized past, is a humdinger of a valedictory. Directed by Eastwood from a script by newcomer Nick Schenk, Gran Torino is Eastwood’s hell-raising salute to every… Rating: 3.5 Stars
Wendy and Lucy
Starring: Michelle Williams, Will Patton, Will Oldham, John Robinson, Wally… Review: Simple story, beautifully told. A distressed dropout named Wendy (the sublime Michelle Williams) and her dog Lucy hop in her beat-up Honda and leave Indiana for Alaska, Wendy’s cautious hope for a new frontier. But when the car dies in Oregon and Lucy goes missing, Wendy faces hard choices and a hard-pressed America that keeps closing doors. I won’t say more, except that director and co-writer Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy) is a true cinema poet who works miracles in miniature. And she finds the perfect collaborator in Williams, an actress of grit and amazing grace. Rating: 3.5 Stars
Cadillac Records
Starring: Emmanuelle Chriqui, Adrien Brody, Gabrielle Union, Beyonce Knowle… Review: Beyoncé Knowles could have nabbed an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress. That’s how good she is playing it all sexy, sassy and druggy as Etta James, the R&B singer who found the soul in songs like “At Last.” Too bad for Knowles that she’s only part of Darnell Martin’s rushed mess of a movie that jams the story of Chicago-based Chess Records into one incoherent package. Adrien Brody plays Leonard Chess, who started the company in the 1950s with his brother Phil (we hardly see him) to record great blues artists and pay them with Caddys. There’s Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters, Eamonn Walker’s as Howlin’ Wolf, and a lively Mos Def as Chuck Berry. It’s all a blur, except for the music. That’s workin’. Rating: 2 Stars
Yes Man
Starring: Jim Carrey, Zooey Deschanel, Bradley Cooper, Rhys Darby, John Mic… Review: Jim Carrey took his lumps for going serious in The Number 23, so he’s back to the comedy well of Liar Liar, in which he played a lawyer forced to tell the truth. Now he’s a loan officer forced to say yes to applicants and to life. If you’re thinking “yuck,” you’re right. I added the extra star for Zooey Deschanel, who is so delicious as his honey that you want not to say no to Yes Man. Rating: 2 Stars