Wedged between blockbuster releases such as Mother's Day and A Little Bit Of Heaven, obscure indie flick The Avengers was always a longshot to do any real damage at the box office. Yet somehow, this little-movie-that-could has captured the imagination of a nation with its emotionally complicated tale of a band of misfits learning to work together for the greater good. Also, a healthy serving of destructoporn hasn't hurt. But forget the hype for a moment: if you're wondering if this no-name super hero film is really worth your time, we're here to help you figure it out.
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"If you can distract yourself from the distraction that is Mel Gibson’s disastrous personal life, The Beaver is an effectively disturbing portrait of a man trying to cope with serious mental problems ... Ultimately the comedy and gravity are too much at odds: Comedy compromises the solemnity and solemnity compromises the comedy." — amNewYork
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Results tagged “reviews”
Avengers Reviews Assembled: Will This Movie Give You Orgasms?
Critics Really Love The 21 Jump Street Reboot
With 21 Jump Street (a franchise reboot of the 1980s TV show) hitting theaters today, we looked around for what we assumed would be some terrible reviews... only to find many, many surprisingly positive ones. So if you want to avoid the St. Patrick's Day debauchery this weekend, guess you can always head over to Jump Street. Here's what reviewers had to say about the movie, which features the emotionless, dead-eyed Channing Tatum.
Video: Random Texan Finds Something To Like About NYC!
This week we became smitten with Karen, the "little Texan abroad" who stormed through Times Square thoroughly unimpressed with everything but the pigeons. The Tocqueville of her generation had said: "I'm afraid to talk out loud, it's kind of crappy here. I feel like an ant in an ant hill." Well, we're happy to report that there is a new video up, and she's found something about NYC she can actually appreciate: Central Park.
Sanity Restored: Grand Forks Food Critic Actually Hated "Impressive" Olive Garden
Marilyn Hagerty's earnest, Hemingway-esque review of the long-awaited Olive Garden in Grand Forks, North Dakota caused a viral aurora borealis to occur this week. Sick and tired of Grand Forks food snobs' stranglehold over the industry, we compared our three NYC-area Olive Gardens to Hagerty's "beautiful" one...and found that ours were seriously lacking. But it turns out that Hagerty wasn't all that impressed with hers either: "By the way, her readers will recognize that as a fairly negative review since she spent a lot more time on the ambience than the food," said a former Grand Forks Herald editor.
Video: Random Texan Takes On NYC: "It's Kind Of Crappy Here"
It seems the genius of Karl Pilkington has swept through Texas: in the videos below, a Texan man films his "little Texan abroad" Karen as she gives her undiluted critique of NYC from Times Square. And it's without a doubt that Karen is the Tocqueville of her generation: "I'm afraid to talk out loud, it's kind of crappy here. I feel like an ant in an ant hill. They have a bunch of TVs all over the place, I could be sitting at home in my living room watching TV...It's just a bunch of crap." At least there's one thing she likes: "They got a cute pigeon. I saw a cute pigeon."
BREAKING: Not All Internet Reviews Are Real
With more and more consumers needing to be told where to eat, what to buy, and the best place to be jailed, businesses see a legitimate reason to outsource illegitimate, positive reviews of their products and services. The stakes are high! One Craigslist ad asking jobseekers (AKA everyone) to "Write Yelp Reviews" is looking for people who "have an active Yelp account and would like to make very easy money." You mean, we can't trust everything we read on the internet?
Weekend Movie Forecast: The Help Vs. 30 Minutes Or Less
Click on the film stills for details and reviews on this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include: The Help, 30 Minutes or Less, Final Destination 5, Glee: The 3D Concert Movie, Senna, Robert Ryan, The Films of Frank Sinatra, Damn!, DocuWeeks 2011, and Cannibal Holocaust.
Weekend Movie Forecast: The Rise of the Planet of the Apes Vs. The Change-Up
Click on the film stills for details and reviews on this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include: The Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Change-Up, Bellflower, Talking Head, Magic Trip, Mysteries of Lisbon, Cold Fish, The Whistleblower, The Perfect Age of Rock 'N' Roll, The Rural Route Film Festival sponsored by Brooklyn Grange and Rooftop Farms, and Quadrophenia.
Weekend Movie Forecast: Cowboys & Aliens Vs. Crazy, Stupid, Love
Click on the film stills for details and reviews on this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include: Crazy, Stupid, Love, Cowboys & Aliens, The Smurfs, The Future, The Interrupters, El Bulli, Cooking in Progress, Attack the Block, Sleep Furiously, One From the Heart, Life in a Day, and Fright Night.
Weekend Movie Forecast: Harry Potter Vs. Errol Morris
Click on the film stills for details and reviews on this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, Tabloid, Winnie the Pooh, Jim Henson's Fantastic World, The Tree, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Lucky, Salvation Boulevard, Life, Above All, and Labyrinth.
Weekend Movie Forecast: X-Men: First Class Vs. Submarine
Click on the film stills for more details and reviews of this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include: X-Men: First Class, Submarine, Beginners, Film Socialisme, Beautiful Boy, Rejoice and Shout, The Last Mountain, Turkey Bowl, Drama Queens: The Soap Opera in Experimental and Independent Cinema, Out of the Blue, and Manhattan.
Weekend Movie Forecast: Pirates Vs. Parisians
Click on the film stills for more details and reviews of this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Midnight in Paris, Louder Than A Bomb, Lost Bohemia, Life 2.0, The Big Uneasy, Cost of a Soul, Jaws, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Elizabeth: The Golden Age.
Don't Call It A Comeback?: Let's Discuss Mel Gibson's Beaver
Weekend Movie Forecast: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson Vs. Werner Herzog
Click on the film stills for more details and reviews of this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include: Fast Five, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Prom, Dylan Dog: Dead of Night, 13 Assassins, The Arbor, The Robber, Sympathy for Delicious, Drop Edges of Yonder: The Films of Rudy Wurlitzer, and Sante Sangre.
Weekend Movie Forecast: Incendies Vs. Madea's Big Happy Family
Click on the film stills for more details and reviews of this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include: Incendies, Madea's Big Happy Family, Water for Elephants, POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, African Cats, Children of Hiroshima, Stake Land, W.C. Fields Retrospective, Beautiful Darling, and Clue.
World Shrugs At First Installment Of Atlas Shrugged Trilogy (Now In Theaters!)
Tea partying libertarians unite! Ayn Rand's Objectivist tome has made it to the big screen, at long last, and as a trilogy. In 1991 the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club ranked the 1957 bestselling novel as the 2nd most influential book ever, the Bible came in 1st place. So how will the movie live up to the printed word? It's not lookin' so good. Part One is in theaters today (tax day!), and the reviews are out; here are some gems:
Weekend Movie Forecast: Arthur Vs. Bill Hicks
Click on the film stills for more details and reviews of this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include: Arthur, American: The Bill Hicks Story, Your Highness, Meek's Cutoff, To Die Like a Man, Charles Burnett: The Power to Endure, De Palma Suspense, Blank City, Hanna and Army of Darkness.
Weekend Movie Forecast: James Frey Vs. Klaus Kinski
Click on the film stills for more details and reviews on this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include: I Am Number Four, 'Film Comment' Series, Unknown, Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son, Vanishing on 7th Street, We Are What We Are, Eniaios: Fifth Cycle, An Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War, Putty Hill, and Jurassic Park.
Weekend Movie Forecast: 3D Bieber Vs. Public Access TV Fest
Click on the film stills for more details and reviews of this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include: Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, TV Party: A Panorama of Public Access in New York City, Just Go with It, The Eagle, Cedar Rapids, Poetry, The Sky Turns, The Susan Sarandon Picture Show, Carancho, Lovers of Hate, Gnomeo and Juliet, The Evil Dead, and Sixteen Candles.
Weekend Movie Forecast: The Green Hornet Vs. The Dilemma
Click on the film stills for more details and reviews of this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include: The Green Hornet, The Dilemma, Barney's Version, Every Day, Breaking and Entering, Somewhat of a Gentlemen, Twelve Thirty, Repo Chick, Plastic Planet, Petition, Mahler on the Couch, I'm Dangerous With Love, Battleship Potemkin, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Upstream.
First Spider-Man Review: "Kind of Rocking and Kind of Sad-ish"
The much troubled tale of mega-musical Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark got a bit of good news today. Though it isn't open to critics for review yet (and won't be for some time at this point) one seems to have slipped through the cracks: six-year-old Ada Grey saw a preview of the show and wrote up a re-piew on her website. And? She likes it!
Weekend Movie Forecast: Harry Potter Vs. Paul Haggis
Click on the film stills for more details and reviews on this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, The Next Three Days, Made in Dagenham, Family Affair, William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, Heartless, Cannon Films Canon, Weimar Cinema, 1919-1933: Daydreams and Nightmares, Today's Special, Total Badass/Hell on Wheels, White Material, Nothing Personal, Maniac, and El Topo.
Weekend Movie Forecast: Morning Glory Vs. Unstoppable
Click on the film stills for more details and reviews on this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include: Morning Glory, Helena From the Wedding, Poison, Tiny Furniture, Cool It, Unstoppable, Bruce Conner: The Art of Montage, Disco and Atomic War, Con Artist, Voulez-vous coucher avec God?, Doctor Butcher M.D. and The Night of the Hunter.
Weekend Movie Forecast: Due Date Vs 127 Hours
Click on the film stills for more details and reviews on this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include: Due Date, 127 Hours, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, Fair Game, For Colored Girls, Four Lions, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench,Red Hill, Megamind, Red Dawn, and Jumanji
Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup
Peels, the cooler-than-thou Bowery restaurant from the team behind Freemans, gets a mixed review in the Times this week. Sam Sifton calls it "a two-story restaurant located at the axis of punk and prep, a Vampire Weekend house... The menu at Peels is vaguely Southern — fried chicken appears, along with shrimp and grits — but the South the restaurant invokes is really the one below Route 27 in Suffolk County, where identity is a matter of bank balance and there is no effective difference between artifice and fact.
Weekend Movie Forecast: Saw 3D Vs. Wild Target
Click on the film stills for more details and reviews on this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include: Saw 3D, Wild Target, Monsters, Welcome to the Rileys, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, Jolene, Waste Land, Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields, The Kids Grow Up, Walkaway, Inspector Bellamy, Poltergeist and Psycho.
Weekend Movie Forecast: The Town Vs. Easy A
Click on the movie stills for more on this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include The Town, Catfish, Easy A, Alpha and Omega, Never Let Me Go, Jack Goes Boating, Picture Me, Freebie, Kings of Pastry, The Girl, The Temptation of St. Tony, On the Bowery, and Gone With the Pope.
Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup
"Fornino Park Slope is a throwback, the sort of restaurant that will appeal mostly to those who still think of Manhattan as 'the city,' and who rarely cross a river to get to work," says Sam Sifton in his one star review of chef Michael Ayoub's return to Park Slope. Despite its expansive menu, most critics have focused (unfavorably) on Fornino's grilled pizza. Sifton doesn't dissent, loving pretty much everything until he comes to that controversial item, which "may be the restaurant’s weakest suit. The pies at Fornino Park Slope have thin crusts, in some cases almost shatteringly so, and they can lack the purity of flavor that characterizes the wood-oven versions at the Williamsburg location. Sometimes they don’t work at all. A plain margherita pie, for instance, sits flat and crackly on its plate, devoid of yeasty flavor; it felt in the mouth a little like a pizza made with saltines."
Weekend Movie Forecast: The Last Exorcism Vs. Takers
Click on the film stills for more details on reviews of this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include: The Last Exorcism, Takers, Mesrine: Killer Instinct, Centurion, The Milk of Sorrow, Daniel & Ana, Louis, Highwater, Change of Plan, Make-Out With Violence, Ida Lupino: Mother Directs, Warriors, and The Shining.
Weekend Movie Forecast: The Army of Crime Vs. The Switch
Click on the film stills for more details on reviews of this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include The Army of Crime, The Switch, Lottery Ticket, Mao's Last Dancer, Nanny McPhee, Piranha 3D, Soul Kitchen, Hiding Divya, The Tillman Story, Blue Velvet and an Eric Rohmer retrospective.
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