Movies

Review: The White Ribbon

Children of the götterdämmerung: Shades of gray in Michael Haneke's White Ribbon
The White Ribbon starts with a black screen and an old man's voice (Ernst Jacobi, who played Hitler in Jan Troell's Hamsun and in a BBC mini-series) relating a series of mysterious accidents and crimes that occurred in the German village where he was a schoolteacher the year before the outbreak of World War I.

By PETER KEOUGH | January 13, 2010

Review: The Lovely Bones

This Salmon won't spawn
When it comes to immortality and the afterlife, movies tend to get sticky.

By PETER KEOUGH | January 13, 2010

Hot + steamy

Finding soups to fight winter's chill
"My kingdom for a plate of soup!" a hungry and possibly freezing Anton Chekov wrote in 1890, aboard a Russian steamer crossing the world's oldest lake.

By DEIRDRE FULTON | January 06, 2010

Review: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Ledger-demain: Gilliam leaves nothing to the Imaginarium
Few filmmakers have suffered from the life-imitates-art phenomenon as has Terry Gilliam.

By PETER KEOUGH | January 11, 2010

Review: Daybreakers

Vampires, weakened
For evidence of the breakdown of the capitalist system, look no farther than the proliferation of vampire and zombie movies.

By PETER KEOUGH | January 06, 2010

Review: Youth In Revolt

Michael Cera hardly revolutionary
Juno continues to poison American independent cinema.

By PETER KEOUGH | January 06, 2010

Review: In Search of Beethoven

Deaf jam
Phil Grabsky's exhaustive documentary doesn't exactly dispel any stereotypes about Beethoven's being a shaggy genius prone to rages.

By SHAULA CLARK | January 06, 2010

Start tasting

New and renewed flavors in Portland's food scene
The events of the last decade have spoiled our taste for speculation.

By BRIAN DUFF | December 30, 2009

Lite at the end of the tunnel?

Fun and games in post-apocalyptic Hollywood
If you had enough of the end of the world with 2012 , you might be relieved when it comes to 2010.

By PETER KEOUGH | January 04, 2010

2009: The year in movies

Men behaving badly
As I looked over my list of the best movies of 2009, it suddenly struck me: where are all the women on screen?

By PETER KEOUGH | December 28, 2009

Review: Nine

Rob Marshall continues his assault on good taste
It doesn't get much farther from human experience than this: an adaptation of a Broadway production adapting a film ( 8-1/2 ) about a filmmaker who imagines making a film.

By PETER KEOUGH | December 22, 2009

Review: It's Complicated

Indeed it is
It's complicated, and so are my feelings about Nancy Meyer's predictable and overlong boomer-bait rom-com.

By MIKE MILIARD | December 22, 2009

Review: Broken Embraces [Los Abrazos Rotos]

Broken promises: Pedro Almodóvar's open Embraces
No filmmaker generates narrative like Pedro Almodóvar. Five minutes into Broken Embraces and he's got half a dozen potential storylines spinning.

By PETER KEOUGH | December 22, 2009

Review: Sherlock Holmes

Boys will be boys
In its own way an ideal holiday blockbuster for the moderately educated, the new light-footed overhaul of Sherlock Holmes is three parts self-satisfied mixer to one part hard storytelling, and if anything, the film's popular trailers should have deterred you from expecting strong drink.

By MICHAEL ATKINSON | December 22, 2009

Review: Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel

Ugh
In playing evil ex-Chipmunk-band manager Ian Hawke, comedian David Cross draws the Short Straw of Irony, being dealt the line "At least I still have my dignity."

By LANCE GOULD | December 22, 2009

Review: Avatar

Machine dreams: James Cameron plays games
For someone who's determined to reduce all experience to mechanical reproduction, James Cameron sure hates machines.

By PETER KEOUGH | December 18, 2009

Review: Did You Hear About the Morgans?

If not, it'll sound familiar pretty quickly
Just in time to round out my Ten Worst Films list comes this witless and excruciating rom-com from Marc Lawrence ( Miss Congeniality ). If you haven't heard about the Morgans, their story will sound familiar pretty quickly

By PETER KEOUGH | December 16, 2009

What would Joan do?

Gifts to show off your taste
In the pilot episode of AMC's Mad Men , Peggy Olson told Joan Holloway: "I'm from Bay Ridge. We have manners."

By DEIRDRE FULTON + CLEA SIMON | December 09, 2009

Keep up with the Mad Men

A whiskey primer to get you in the door
Don Draper and his ad men swig whiskey all day like it's no thing, but some of you daintier folk may think scotch and bourbon are too harsh.

By DEIRDRE FULTON | December 09, 2009

Review: Invictus

Clint shows team spirit
Poetry, muses Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) in a reflective moment in Invictus , consists only of words, yet it can inspire perseverance and greatness beyond our own expectations of ourselves. Sport, similarly, consists of oversized, overpaid athletes pounding one another in simulated combat, but it's also a form of poetry.

By PETER KEOUGH | December 09, 2009