Michelle Orange

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REVIEW: [REC] 2 Just Another Visit to the Horror-Franchise Ghetto

[REC] 2 relies almost entirely on its tunnel-vision, single-player style for its scares. It's a strategy that stalls out halfway through, which means it works for twice…

Friday, July 9, 2010

REVIEW: Ask Not What Predators Does For Adrien Brody, Ask What Adrien Brody Does For Predators

Not a sequel and not quite a reboot, Predators sits in that no-man's land of derivation, where a franchise is plundered mainly for its conceptual cachet, and continuity…

Thursday, July 8, 2010

REVIEW: Youth Zooms by in Spectacularly Rich Racing Dreams

A lot of hyperbole gets jacked up and spun around in the opening scenes of Racing Dreams, Marshall Curry's wonderful and wonderfully surprising documentary about the…

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

REVIEW: Winnebago Man Explores Making and Breaking of a Viral Video Superstar

At 76, Jack Rebney speaks in rich, Orson Wellesian tones and has a gift for cursing that even the old master might have admired. Trained as a broadcaster but reduced…

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

REVIEW: David Lynch, Todd Haynes Tops Among Great Directors

I don't know if Angela Ismailos's Great Directors is a great documentary, but for the most part it's a treat to watch. On second thought, I do know: This not a great or…

Thursday, July 1, 2010

REVIEW: Despite Pedigree, Love Ranch Succumbs to Tired, Hookerific Cliches

Playing the madam at the center of Love Ranch, Helen Mirren seems acutely aware of the novelty of a freshly minted grande dame picking up her skirts and heading straight…

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

REVIEW: Oliver Stone's Suck-Up Safari Dooms South of the Border

An extended belly-bump of a documentary, South of the Border is Oliver Stone's feel-good take on the new South American politics. A vanity project by proxy, Stone…

Thursday, June 24, 2010

REVIEW: Perverse Dogtooth Wins With Sickness and Slickness

I know of a 100-year-old woman who still thought of her 69-year-old son as her "boy"; when she died last year he mourned the loss of his status as somebody's child. Such…

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

REVIEW: Playful Alain Resnais Gets a Bit Lost in His Wild Grass

With the end of middle age within tippy-toe reach, Georges Palet (André Dussollier) has pulled into a kind of defensive crouch; he's not going willingly, and open to…

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

REVIEW: Tilda Swinton Dazzles in Virtuosic I Am Love

A clamorous Italian counterpart to Summer Hours, last year's lyrical meditation on French tradition in decline, I Am Love also examines fading nationalist notions of…

Thursday, June 17, 2010

REVIEW: Fascinating, Frustrating Cyrus Loses Its Nerve

The Duplass brothers (co-writers and -directors Jay and Mark) are devout practitioners of something I'll call moment-based filmmaking. Graduates of both the Mumblecore…

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

REVIEW: Emotions Get the Better of 8: The Mormon Proposition

Scheduled to be released on the second anniversary of California's legislation of gay marriage, 8: The Mormon Proposition marks the occasion with a furious requiem…

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

REVIEW: Clichés Fly Like Bullets in Gangster's Paradise: Jerusalema

A gangster epic with a geopolitical twist, Gangster's Paradise: Jerusalema prefaces its portrait of a young man's rise in the criminal underworld with the assurance that…

Friday, June 11, 2010

REVIEW: Jackie Chan, Karate Kid Offer Hit-Or-Miss Summer Treat

For those weaned on the original, watching The Karate Kid's franchise reboot is a little like running into your old crush at a middle-school reunion: Warmly familiar and…

Thursday, June 10, 2010

REVIEW: Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky Caught in More Than a Bad Romance

Igor Stravinsky wrote that he left the Paris theater where the 1913 premiere of his revolutionary work, "The Rite of Spring," was inciting a bourgeoisie riot before it…

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

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