MOVIE REVIEWS

Reviewed by Chris Pandolfi -  The documentary Bully opens with footage of David Long of Murray County, Georgia watching home video footage of his son, Tyler. Initially, David claims, Tyler was a bright and vibrant little boy. But as he grew older, something in him changed. He became more and more withdrawn from other kids his age, preferring to be alone. Gradually, David and his wife, Tina, became aware that he was being picked on in school. In all likelihood, they didn’t know the full extent of their son’s physical...

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Reviewed by Chris Pandolfi - I think what I appreciated most about Wrath of the Titans is that, unlike its 2010 predecessor, I wasn’t forced into making comparisons between versions. Clash of the Titans was, of course, a remake of the 1981 film of the same name. Many people thought I was insane for liking that film. Many more were angry that I had the gall to say the remake was better than the original. As much as I don’t like to fan flames, there’s really no getting around this: It...

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Reviewed by Chris Pandolfi -  I had no idea how ill prepared I was to experience Detachment. Here is a film that plunges headfirst into the depths of disillusionment, despair, and failure and almost never resurfaces for air. You will experience emotions normally repressed during movie watching. You will be saddened, shocked, and above all, angered. You will see things you wouldn’t ever want to see and hear things that should never be heard. You will wade through a sea of bleakness, desperately searching for some small shred of hope...

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Reviewed by Chris Pandolfi -   That The Hunger Games is so timely and intelligent is precisely the reason why it’s also so frightening. It depicts a time and place in which the failures of mass society are exploited for the entertainment of the privileged few. In this case, it’s in the form of an annual competition to the death, one that’s captured via hidden cameras and aired for the rest of the world to see. Whatever they call it in this alternate reality, it would be called reality TV in ours....

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Reviewed by Chris Pandolfi -  Casa de Mi Padre is the most tedious film of its kind since MacGruber – a strained effort that has little to go on apart from its one-joke premise, namely a Spanish-language American production that parodies Mexican telenovelas. When it had finally gone through all of its eighty-four minutes (which, by all accounts, is a very short running time), I had the unshakable feeling that the exact same story could have been told as a five-minute Saturday Night Live skit, one that might not have...

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Reviewed by Chris Pandolfi -  21 Jump Street treads on thin ice in an early scene where it’s explained that the police department has revived a specialty division that started in the 1980s, that it’s part of a trend of resurrecting and modernizing old programs due to a lack of original ideas, and that they’re hoping the public won’t notice. Nothing threatens to ruin a movie faster than winking at the audience in a showy display of self-referential humor. Fortunately, the filmmakers had the foresight to get this out of...

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