Many times, movies based on plays feel narrow in scope while being linguistically florid. The movie of The History Boys, fresh from West End and Broadway, feels most of the time like it was written for the screen (a compliment). Many scenes are just two people plowing through a complex series of responses […]

I cannot deny that this film has more “that was lucky!” moments and stilted plot elements than anything recently opening, but I also must attest that this movie was far, far more enjoyable than it appears to be. Two burly men seated behind me were muttering as they left about how they expected it […]

It’s a movie, people. Exactly the kind of movie that gets made for people who love the kind of love story that only happens in movies. The kind of movie a gal needs for swooning over tremble-inducing forearms, drool-inducing accents, impeccable manners, and hypnotically focused interest in our heroine. (For a perfect […]

Production designer-turned-director Catherine Hardwicke cowrote the screenplay to Thirteen with Nikki Reed, who was 13 at the time the film was written (it was shot a year later). Nikki plays school popular bad-girl and mentor and eventual best friend to Evan Rachel Wood. Together they portray the stories that Reed had told Hardwicke […]

I had the good fortune to see this film with my New Zealander friend, who had all kinds of nostalgic insight into the elementary school life of the Maori girl around whom this film centers. While occasionally a little heavy handed and obvious with the metaphors (you can almost see the yellow arrow […]

Despite the extremely lame and chicken-hearted censoring of the “controversial” poster (star Amanda Bynes apparently advertising her Verizon service), What A Girl Wants takes the general magical notion of the Princess Diaries and excises all the insulting messages in praise of confirming. Then it adds underrated Colin Firth as Sir Daddy and the lovely […]

In my excessively biased opinion, there are two generations for which the teen movie genre means something: Gen X and Gen Y. I myself am classic Gen X, and went with a friend 4 years my junior who, culturally, had a similar experience, but hasn’t seen many of the recent (read: starring Freddie Prinz […]

This movie is exactly what you expect out of it, in a good sense. It is silly, fun, energetic, just like its subject matter - but it is also amusing and lacks any kind of big, Keyser Sose-style surprises. It’s a fun summer movie filled with bouncing, asexual teens, with a little romance […]

If you couldn’t figure it out from the preview, this is Pygmalion (My Fair Lady) for the Dawson’s Creek set. It is amazing that they can swipe a classic tale like that and still add nothing but derivative tack-on flava to it. I don’t want to sound like an old fuddy duddy, but […]

Understand, I am in my mid-late 20’s, a child of the 80’s in its purest distilled form. I fear the huge jeans and the tattoos and the piercing going on in today’s 3rd grade classroom. Dawson’s Creek is….well, jeez. So even as I feared this movie, something in the preview called me. […]