Weekend Movie Forecast: The Hurt Locker Vs. Transformers

Manohla Dargis is simply scathing in her dismissal of Surveillance, "a would-be transgression that tries to squeeze dark laughs from the spectacle of human suffering," and doubts it "would be taking up space in theaters if its director were not the daughter of a name filmmaker. Jennifer Lynch, spawn of David, has made one other feature, a 1993 botch-up titled Boxing Helena, about a surgeon who turns the object of his desire into his own Venus de Milo by amputating her healthy legs and arms... If it seems unfair to compare her with her father, Ms. Lynch, much like Sofia Coppola, makes it easy. As the story jumps among different versions of what happened — insert obligatory if misleading Rashomon reference here — the pace slackens even as the drip, drip, drip of blood turns into a geyser." (It's worth nothing that Melissa Anderson at the Voice passionately dissents.)