Film section: Metro Weekly

Black Out

The only reason why ''Men in Black III'' is tolerable is because it unabashedly falls into its old, successful rhythms

Published on May 24, 2012, 2:26am

Men in Black III shouldn't have happened. That's not to say that it was a particularly bad idea – it doesn't even approach the terrible lows of the sequel that preceded it –but it is a disaster of Hollywood mismanagement. To call it ''troubled'' is like claiming Will Smith is ''wealthy'' or that Tommy Lee Jones has a face that ''resembles'' exposed rock crag. It's not wrong to say those things, yet they don't capture just how disastrous, how filthy ...[more]

Bull's Eye

The marriage between top-notch acting and real-life narration pays off in Bernie

Published on May 18, 2012, 2:55pm

Let's get one thing out of the way: Bernie is about much more than a real-life murder. ''What you're fixin' to see is a true story,'' a title card promises at the film's onset, and ultimately, that story is much wilder than the mystery of how, in 1996, an 81-year-old heiress was stuffed into a freezer with four bullets in her back. (Yes, even wilder than that.) Bernie, at its heart, is a dark comedy about small-town culture in East ...[more]

Black Comedy

Jack Black explores the gentle side of murder

Published on May 17, 2012, 3:34am

Even Jack Black isn't sure if his newest film, Bernie (see review, page 54) is a comedy or a tragedy -- but don't hold that against him. Black plays Bernie Tiede, a middle-aged gay mortician who, despite being a beloved figure in a small Texas town, shot and killed his 81-year-old heiress companion (Shirley MacLaine), then stuffed her in a freezer. That kind of story isn't just funny or tragic -- it's somewhere in between. ''It's a very dark comedy,'' ...[more]

The Hole Truth

Drummer Patty Schemel reveals life in her former band Hole

Published on May 10, 2012, 4:42am

You often hear about pop artists and bands partying hard, being reckless with life and drugs. But you rarely see it. ''I didn't really want to tell the whole world about the way it was and then what happened,'' says Patty Schemel, former lesbian drummer of grunge band Hole. ''I never thought that [video footage] would go anywhere except for my living room.'' Schemel took 40 hours of footage of the band led by Courtney Love during its heyday in ...[more]

Blood Sucking

''Dark Shadows'' is another nail in Tim Burton's artistic coffin – a reminder that style doesn't guarantee quality

Published on May 10, 2012, 4:38am

Stop me if any of this seems familiar: Johnny Depp wears makeup and an odd costume to play a quirky man with an accent. Tim Burton directs a movie chock-full of pale skin and lackluster melodrama. The world is round. Two and two makes four. Dark Shadows, to put it another way, is predictably terrible. It is not a good movie, nor is it a good adaptation of the gothic soap opera on which it's based. The characters are trite, ...[more]

Avenging Marvels

Magnificently helmed by Joss Whedon, ''The Avengers'' is a gargantuan joy, so see it in the largest, loudest theater you can find

Published on May 2, 2012, 11:52pm

Take a minute to consider how incredible it is that The Avengers exists. This movie, after all, is more than seven years in the making. Along the way, five others had to be filmed, released, and succeed at the box office. A small army of superheroes had to be cast, and those actors had to sign on for additional work. All told, Marvel Studios spent more than a billion dollars -- a billion freaking dollars -- to carry its substantial ...[more]

Bully for 'Bully'

It's a documentary with some shortcomings, but the power of the content fills the gaps

Published on April 19, 2012, 5:58am

There's no such thing as an honest documentary. Any one, told in any way, will be twisted and tacked into place by a filmmaker's intentions. An experience, even if it's captured in its entirety, will be edited and condensed. Voice-over narration offers context as a storytelling device, but fundamentally affects how that story is told. Whether we like it or not, documentaries are shaped as much by their creators as they are by their subjects. Knowing this is necessary to ...[more]

Cylindrical Cinema

A custom-designed film projects around the museum's perimeter nightly

Published on April 19, 2012, 3:48am

Kerry Brougher doesn't think architect Gordon Bunshaft or other developers of the Hirshhorn Museum anticipated that the circular, donut-shaped building, completed in 1974, would one day function as a giant, 360-degree cinema screen. But that's exactly what it is now, with Doug Aitken's custom-designed film Song 1 projected around the Hirshhorn's perimeter every night. {Doug Aitken: Song 1 (Photo by Frederick Charles)} Other than a single slide projected onto the building for one night in the '80s, Brougher, the Hirshhorn's ...[more]

Cabin Fever

With ''Cabin in the Woods,'' Joss Whedon proves filmmakers can make something smart and scary, self-aware and compelling

Published on April 13, 2012, 7:53am

Don't watch the trailer, don't ask your friends, and above all else, don't read about it online. (Except, um, here.) The Cabin in the Woods is a movie to be seen without the faintest idea of what it's about. Think Evil Dead meets Scream, magnified 10-times over in a movie so steeped in horror that it repurposes clichés into delightful critiques about our expectations of the genre. Here's the premise, at least as much as it can be without spoiling ...[more]

Comic Culture

A documentary exploring the devotion of Comic-Con fans is long on love, slight on scrutiny

Published on April 13, 2012, 7:49am

Fandom has reached something akin to a roaring pitch on the fringes of today's pop culture. For every hit television show or movie, dozens of critics abound to summarize and analyze what's what. This is a good thing: People, now more than ever, have opportunities to discuss and debate the things they love. And with Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope, Morgan Spurlock wants us to know how very much they do. But understanding why they're loved? Now that's something ...[more]

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