I'm always confused when people describe first person as a trope of the YA genre, because it's been around since Moll Flanders and Pamela — since the dawn of the English novel, in other words. (Though if you called Pamela the Twilight of its day, I would not disagree.) Agreed that it can be a crutch, though, for…

Agreed on the lack of logic. A ghost story needs a convincing motive for the protagonist to stay in the scary house (and, in this case, for the townspeople to allow him to stay there), and I don't think they pulled it off. Sure, he had paperwork, but maybe he should have hauled it over to the inn, especially since it…

I only know what I've read about the stage play, but yeah, no framing device in the film, no flashbacks. Seems like the plot's been changed quite a bit, as well, because "Flashbacks don't work in film," according to Susan Hill in some interview I read. The many films with flashbacks and framing devices (some great,…

I saw it for free and didn't find it scary at all, and increasingly frustrating as it went on. Radcliffe's character is so passive and clueless, he's obviously just a device to get us in the scary place, not a real character like the protagonist of The Orphanage.

I felt the same way. If I had to explain why Hugo stuck with me more (and I wasn't expecting to like it at all), it's because Melies as depicted in the film is a kooky genius, an innovator, a risk taker. I care more about the drama of his legacy disappearing than I ever could about bland swashbuckler George Valentin…

Normally I refrain from criticizing a movie I haven't seen, but compounding the 9/11 factor with a precocious child and a scavenger hunt is just pushing my buttons. Also, it's taking up a lot of real estate at my local multiplexes, while Haywire is biting the dust and various nonnominated specialty films may never…

Don't forget the adorably lisping little blond girl who calls Viola Davis her real mommy! No story like this is complete without a tot too cute to live.

What some people find offensive about The Reader is that she answers for her crimes of the past by… uh, learning to read. Or something. There's this vague suggestion that literacy and the classics redeem her, and that lack of education contributed to making her a Nazi. It's all very vague and tasteful, not in your…

I learned about film from reading Pauline Kael in my parents' New Yorkers. She hated most of the big Oscar winners of the '80s, and she hated many of my childhood favorites, too. But she still got me to check out a ton of good stuff, starting with Lynch circa The Elephant Man. She was the only critic I had access to…

In places like where I live (East Bumfuck), a film's Oscar nominations or lack thereof can determine whether you ever get to see it on the big screen. One of our theaters had Shame on its upcoming programming list, but now it's been dropped in favor of keeping Albert Nobbs and Extremely Loud…. I'm guessing this has…

The Tree of Life is like Wordsworth's The Prelude to me. I can see that they're a little ponderous and a little silly, especially when the authorial voice intrudes, but I still think they're the best depictions of childhood I know, and deeply moving on that level. I watched all Malick's other stuff (for the first…

It had its campy moments, sure, but I admit, this movie got me. The opening voiceover was pretty fucking overwrought, but the first death was well handled, and it mostly worked from there. I left thinking if they ever adapt Dan Simmons' The Terror, Neeson should play the lead, 'cause that's what it reminded me of.

I just watched it for the first time a week or so ago, but not because of the Primer. It's a movie I've been meaning to get to ever since I was 12 and obsessed with Harrison Ford and looked up his filmography in some big, already-outdated library book.

They both kind of bored me, but I found some substance in Win-Win (it felt like a solid TV pilot) and absolutely none in The Descendants. We never learn anything about the wife's personality (besides the one revelation) or Clooney's relationship with her, so for me, his grieving had little weight. Maybe I just have no…

I love Drive, and I think The Help is every bit as much a genre movie (its genre being Lifetime Presents). The Silence of the Lambs was a genre movie. I guess the problem is, Drive is an exercise in style with no message tacked onto it. What it does really well is fuck with the audience's genre expectations. The…

The Blind Side was just barely dark and low-key enough to pass as a gritty prestige drama with its target audience. Plus, people (OK, women) love Sandra Bullock's character because she's a take-no-prisoners Southern matron rather than a weeper. When I saw the scene where her family has Thanksgiving dinner, and they're…

Yeah, I saw it, and I don't get the Cinemascore, either. I questioned my two companions afterward in an effort to figure out why people would hate it. One found the beginning too slow and self-indulgently arty, but liked it starting with Dublin. The other liked the beginning, but found the deer scene and the ending…

That must have been the third one, Rise of the Lycans. It was all distant-past backstory. I hadn't seen the others, so I didn't really understand anything except that it was one of the worst films I've ever seen.

Haha. That was exactly my reaction to it. Wouldn't put it on the Ten Worst list, though.

I also saw Carnage. It was better and funnier than I'd been led to believe, but felt like it was lacking a final act and anything resembling redeeming insight. (Which is OK, I guess, because how often do you see an uncompromisingly pitch-black comedy? But the "message," that politically correct civilization is a…