Mike D'Angelo
Story Archive
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Film'The Expendables' is overstuffed and empty
Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2010 Give it up, guys. Your '80s action hero days are over.
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FilmHoax or not, Banksy’s 'Exit Through the Gift Shop' is brilliant
Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2010 The film serves as a bitterly hilarious illustration of the way radical and subversive concepts get appropriated by the talentless and watered down for mass consumption
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Film"Winter's Bone" is the best film of the year
Wednesday, July 28, 2010 At first glance, Winter’s Bone, looks like more of the same. Against all odds, however, this turns out to be the most electrifying movie of the year.
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Entertainment"Love Ranch" film makes hookers seem dull
Wednesday, July 28, 2010 You might imagine a movie about legalized prostitution would at least hold your attention. But there’s a reason director Taylor Hackford (Ray) has the word “hack” in his surname.
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EntertainmentReal, believably flawed people populate "The Kids Are All Right"
Wednesday, July 21, 2010 Every character in this Sundance hit, regardless of sexual orientation, proves to be believably, entertainingly flawed
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FilmOn the fence: "Cyrus" can’t commit to indie or mainstream
Wednesday, July 7, 2010 This could be either a broad mainstream comedy or a subtle indie character study. As executed by the Duplass brothers, it’s essentially both at once.
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FilmHarry Brown
Wednesday, June 30, 2010 Michael Caine is provided with his finest showcase in years, affording him multiple opportunities to wrap that silky-steel voice around barely veiled threats and mock-sorrowful farewells.
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FilmSolitary Man
Wednesday, June 23, 2010 Few things in life are more pathetic than the aging privileged male who bumps up against irrefutable evidence of his own mortality and instantly turns into a destructive, carpe-diem a-hole.
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FilmOnly a great movie: "Toy Story 3"
Wednesday, June 16, 2010 Toy Story 3 isn’t the instant classic that its predecessors were, and doesn’t achieve the envelope-pushing creative heights of WALL-E’s wordless first act.
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FilmLetter from Cannes
Wednesday, May 26, 2010 Even before it began, the 63rd Festival de Cannes was widely considered a failure.
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FilmHoodwinked
Wednesday, May 12, 2010 Starring Russell Crowe, the latest "Robin Hood" is all fury, no fun.
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FilmWe all lose with 'The Losers'
Wednesday, April 21, 2010 It’s a mystery to me why the generic Hollywood action movie hasn’t yet followed the example of the generic porn flick.
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FilmThe Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Wednesday, April 14, 2010 Exposed skin, Eastern mysticism and an angry feminist tract? All of the above.
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FilmDate Night
Wednesday, April 7, 2010 Looking to spice up their dull marriage, Phil and Claire Foster depart boring old New Jersey for a night on the town in Manhattan, only to get way more excitement than they bargained for.
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FilmA Prophet
Wednesday, March 31, 2010 It’s so rare these days to see a movie demonstrate simple, quiet proficiency that critics can sometimes respond to that quality with a little too much gratitude.
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FilmNot a nice guy
Wednesday, March 24, 2010 Greenberg’s unlikable protagonist overwhelms its insights.
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FilmNo end in sight
Wednesday, March 10, 2010 Green Zone tediously rehashes critiques of the war in Iraq
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FilmThe Last Station
Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010 A virtually un-buzzed film gets two Oscar nods, and for good reason.
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FilmMartin Scorsese's extraordinary fever dream
Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010 The Departed may be the better movie overall, but Shutter Island, prioritizing mood and imagery over everything else, makes for superior cinema.
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ReviewsA familiar tune
Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010 Jeff Bridges shows off in the predictable but entertaining Crazy Heart
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FilmEdge of Darkness
Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010 It feel a bit like Ransom, except that in this case Mel Gibson's child is already dead, so he’s even meaner and more implacable.
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Film"Broken Embraces"
Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010 This is yet another tiresomely reflexive film about filmmaking, moving back and forth between present-day Madrid, where a blind writer-director wrestles with footage of a movie he shot.
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FilmPeter Jackson takes the wrong approach with "The Lovely Bones"
Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010 The movie spends an inordinate amount of time with Susie in her personal heaven, which usually resembles the preposterously idyllic landscapes that pharmaceutical ads employ to distract you.
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ReviewsLighter than air
Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2009 The glib Up in the Air is entertaining but insignificant.
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ReviewsMe and Orson Welles
Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2009 Presented with a movie called Me and Orson Welles, one can’t help but immediately wonder who “me” might be.
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FilmInvictus
Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2009 Clint Eastwood's film does almost nothing but congratulate itself for two solid hours.
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ReviewsO Brothers, where art thou?
Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2009 You’ll probably feel like you’ve seen this remake before, even if you haven’t.
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FilmA pretty fantastic Fox
Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009 Wes Anderson makes a very Wes Anderson-y animated film.
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ReviewsPrecious
Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2009 Poor black teens. Neglect. AIDS. Rape. Down syndrome. Give this film an Oscar already!
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ReviewsMaking the commonplace seem fresh
Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009 David has a wee secret, and if you can't figure it out, you badly need an education of your own.
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FilmThe Men Who Stare at Goats
Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2009 The story of an elite unit of soldiers armed with psychic powers was plenty nutty on its own—playing it for broad laughs in "The Men Who Stared at Goats" only renders it surprisingly toothless.
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ReviewsAmelia
Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009 Amelia Earhart was a woman in a male-dominated field, and Amelia beats that fact into the ground until it coughs up blood.
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ScreenThe Stepfather
Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2009 The 1987’s low-budget sleeper The Stepfather has long been championed as an uncommonly intelligent thriller, though it’d really be more accurate to call it primo schlock.
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ReviewsWhere the emo things are
Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2009 Spike Jonze turns a children’s classic into a twee indie-rock lyric.
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FilmBright Star
Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2009 Here’s the deal: Either you’re the kind of person who’s going to get excited by a movie about the chaste romance between 19th-century poet John Keats and the love of his life, Fanny Brawne, or you’re not. If you are, keep reading.
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ScreenLove, Michael Moore-style
Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2009 If there are two people I never want to see in a motion picture again, they are Michael Moore and some poor, low-paid security guard who is just trying to do his/her goddamn job.
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FilmHomicide
Thursday, Sept. 17, 2009 Long unavailable on home video, David Mamet’s 1991 film Homicide remains the most weirdly personal work he’s written directly for the screen, and still ranks among his finest.
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FilmGroovy nonsense
Thursday, Sept. 17, 2009 Steven Soderbergh transforms corporate malfeasance into zany comedy with The Informant!
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FilmJulia
Thursday, Sept. 3, 2009 Easily one of the best films to be released this year—albeit not in Las Vegas—Julia finds perpetually cool Oscar-winner Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton) taking a flamethrower to her image.
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FilmAng Lee’s lamest movie ever
Thursday, Aug. 27, 2009 It was inevitable, I suppose, that Ang Lee would eventually get around to the historical docudrama—or, as I’ve recently dubbed that generally useless collection of bullet-point factoids, the Wiki-movie. Enter Taking Woodstock.
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FilmA Tarantino fave: The 5 Deadly Venom
Thursday, Aug. 20, 2009 Chang Cheh’s The 5 Deadly Venoms (1978) boasted a concept so memorable that it was even parodied in the animated Kung Fu Panda.
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FilmDisappointing Basterds
Thursday, Aug. 20, 2009 While Tarantino spent the better part of a decade describing this project as his version of The Dirty Dozen or The Guns of Navarone—a badass, action-heavy, dudes-on-a-mission war flick - he’s actually made ... well, a Tarantino movie.
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FilmBlunt but effective allegory, with aliens
Thursday, Aug. 13, 2009 Structured as a fake documentary, a city-sized spacecraft mysteriously stalled 20 years ago Its starving, frightened occupants, who resemble huge bipedal prawns, were evacuated by humanity and given what was meant to be temporary shelter in a hastily constructed shantytown.
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FilmIntimate yet grandiose
Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009 Francis Ford Coppola capitalizes on his freedom to indulge himself with Tetro
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FilmDVD Spotlight: Repulsion
Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009 Few films have depicted the descent into madness with as much sheer nightmarish brio as Roman Polanski’s 1965 Repulsion.
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FilmStaring into the void
Thursday, July 30, 2009 Funny People finds longtime pal Judd Apatow teasing us with the notion of the “real” Adam Sandler. It’s a commendably dark portrait in many ways, but even in the guise of an unregenerate asshole, Sandler gives the camera absolutely nothing. He’s a contemptuous void.
