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Rolling Stone Movie Reviews

© Copyright 2009 Rolling Stone

Public Enemies

Starring: Johnny Depp, Channing Tatum, Christian Bale, Billy Crudup, Marion... Review: Infamous bank robber John Dillinger was at the movies on the steamy July night in 1934 when FBI agents gunned him down outside Chicago's Biograph Theatre. In Michael Mann's jolting Public Enemies, sparked by a ball-of-fire Johnny Depp as Dillinger, America's most wanted man sits in a crowded theater watching Manhattan Melodrama, starring Clark Gable as a racketeer facing the electric chair with attitude — "Die like you live: all of a sudden." Hearing the line brings a smile to Dillinger's lips. Depp cannily plays the moment as an acknowledgment of how Hollywood romanticizes gangster life in contrast to the bruising reality. The gulf between the two — violence giving way to existential angst — is what gives Public Enemies its explosive kick. Rating: 3.5 Stars
(Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:45:58 PDT)

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Starring: Shia LeBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel Review: It's tempting to dismiss Michael Bay's long, loud and ludicrous sequel to 2007's Transformers with one word — hunkajunk. On every level this movie is as bankrupt as GM. But there is more to be said about a movie this gargantuan ($200 million spent on robot hardbodies) and galactically stupid. Transformers: The Revenge of The Fallen is beyond bad, it carves out its own category of godawfulness. And, please, you don't have to remind me that the original was a colossal hit ($700 million worldwide) and the sequel will probably do just as well. I know it's popular. So is junk food, and they both poison your insides and rot your brain. But I do accept that Bay is unique. No one can top him for telling a story with such striking, shrieking incoherence. Rating: Not Rated
(Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:57:34 PDT)

Cheri

Starring: Michelle Pfeiffer Review: As a cougar chasing a teen twink: That's a crass précis for the elegant, witty pleasures that Pfeiffer, director Stephen Frears and writer Christopher Hampton — who last collaborated on 1988's Dangerous Liaisons — carve out of this tale by the French novelist Colette. Set in Paris in the early 1900s, the film begins as retired courtesan Léa (Pfeiffer) enters into a six-year affair with Cheri (the excellent Rupert Friend), 19, the son of her colleague Charlotte (a wickedly frisky Kathy Bates). Léa and Cheri will pretend there is no such thing as love, and ultimately be scarred by it. With Pfeiffer, 50, radiating uncommon beauty, grace and feeling, Frears uncovers a fragile story's grieving heart. (Check out more news and reviews from Peter Travers on the... Rating: 3 Stars
(Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:06:45 PDT)

The Hurt Locker

Starring: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty Review: Here's the Iraq War movie for those who don't like Iraq War movies. The Hurt Locker doesn't preach. Director Kathryn Bigelow, working from a strong script by embedded journalist Mark Boal, gets right down to business (watch Peter Travers' video review of The Hurt Locker). She takes us deep into an elite U.S. bomb-disposal squad in Baghdad. The dazzling virtuosity of her ticking-bomb thriller includes staying alert to what's ticking inside the men. At the start, soldiers J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) watch in horror as their sarge (Guy Pearce) suits up to defuse a bomb that goes off in his face. Enter Staff Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner) as the new head of the unit. Sanborn thinks James is all kinds of reckless, and Renner and Mackie are outstanding at... Rating: 3.5 Stars
(Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:02:29 PDT)

My Sister's Keeper

Starring: Cameron Diaz, Abigail Breslin, Alec Baldwin Review: Adapted from a bestseller by Jodi Picoult that I hope to never read, My Sister's Keeper starts with an intriguing premise. (Watch Peter Travers' video review of My Sister's Keeper.) Cameron Diaz and Jason Patric conceive a child to keep her leukemic older sister (Sofia Vassilieva) alive through transfusions and transplants. But when Anna (Abigail Breslin), 11, hires a lawyer (Alec Baldwin) to sue for the right to her own body, all hell breaks loose. So does the movie. Though the actors give it a go, notably Diaz, who plays the "crazy bitch" mom with no-bull restraint, director Nick Cassavetes shifts to Notebook mode and jerks tears at every turn. Almost everyone Anna encounters has his or her own tragedy (cancer, epilepsy, a dead child). And each story is set to treacly songs (cue "Life Is... Rating: 1.5 Stars
(Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:01:17 PDT)

Whatever Works

Starring: Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, Patricia Clarkson Review: Not everything works in Woody Allen?s first New York–based movie in five years (he?s gone European). Whatever Works feels like something out of time and, worse, out of step. Hell, Allen wrote the script back in the 1970s for Zero Mostel. The grumpy old Jew at the center of this comedy of complaints — divorced physicist and two–time suicide attempter Boris Yellnikoff — is played not by Allen, 73, but by Larry David, 61. Allen wanted to go younger and angrier. Enter David, the fulminating joke engine of Curb Your Enthusiasm, whose Boris kvetches at the camera (meaning us) just like Allen?s Alvy Singer did in Annie Hall in 1977. ?The universe is expanding,? a worried young Alvy tells his mother. Her retort, ?What is that your business?? is... Rating: 2.5 Stars
(Thu, 18 Jun 2009 01:17:47 PDT)

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