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Dana Stevens — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 22:05:33 GMT

Such is the power of Freaks and Geeks that, even though I was in my early 30s when it first aired, its young cast feels to me a decade later like people I knew and loved in high school. There’s an absurd rush of “Hey, I knew them when!” pride whenever one of the kids from that show finds a measure of success in his or her career. Unfortunately, the “hims” have found a lot more of that success than the “hers.”The entire male “freak” contingent (James Franco, Jason Segel, Seth Rogen) has gone on to stardom and the creative freedom that comes with it, while the equally talented female freaks, Busy Phillips and Linda Cardellini, have kept working without ever quite getting the chance to bust out that they deserve. (The “geeks” would require another column entirely: I for one will not rest until Martin Starr, Samm Levine, and John Francis Daly all headline their own comedies in the same programming block.)

Bad Cop

Dana Stevens — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:35:33 GMT

With Rampart, the Israeli director Oren Moverman shifts into an idiom that’s more likely to appeal to American audiences than the quiet, downbeat social realism of his first film, The Messenger (2009). The partly-true story of a very bad cop brought down by the LAPD corruption scandals of the late ’90s, Rampart is much louder, jazzier, and more directorially show-offy than The Messenger (and, in part for those reasons, not nearly as good a movie). But at times this gritty, intermittently gripping police drama feels like a follow-up to The Messenger—not just because of the thematic overlap (both films deal with grief, substance abuse, and self-destructive masculinity), but because Rampart’s main character, the cynical, drug-abusing cop played by Woody Harrelson, might be the long-lost twin of the alcoholic Army captain Harrelson played in the earlier Moverman film.

Boo!

Dana Stevens — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:51:30 GMT

Horror is a highly citational genre. Scary movies love to pay tribute to their stylistic predecessors, whether with nostalgic affection (homage), sly irony (spoof), or artful imitation (pastiche). Indeed, it seems like every horror movie that comes out these days self-consciously incorporates at least one of these approaches (or, more often, combines them all into a tonally incongruous mishmash). But coming across a horror film that’s just plain old-fashioned—not retro but square—is unusual. The Woman in Black, Daniel Radcliffe’s first post-Harry Potter outing, is as square as they come.

What a Drag

Dana Stevens — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:20:33 GMT

Albert Nobbs (Glenn Close), the diminutive protagonist of Rodrigo Garcia’s film of the same name, works as a waiter in a posh hotel in late 19th-century Dublin. He speaks little and, when he does, reveals still less. Outside of a cordial master/servant relationship with Dr. Holloran (Brendan Gleeson), a hard-drinking physician in residence at the hotel, the passive, blank-faced Nobbs seems to have no friendships at all. As he prepares for bed one night in his tiny, drab bedchamber, we learn the truth about this cipher of a man: Albert is in fact a woman who’s been passing as male since her hardscrabble teenage years in order to find work and avoid harassment at the hands of men.

The Grey

Dana Stevens — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:52:19 GMT

Joe Carnahan’s The Grey (Open Road Films) provides everything you could reasonably want from a January release about Liam Neeson fighting wolves. That may sound like faint praise, but the truth is, I pretty much loved this movie from start to finish—risible implausibilities, insufficiently explained premise and all. An admirably spare survival thriller, The Grey (nice title!) abounds in qualities that are rare in movies of its type. It’s quiet, contemplative, and almost haiku-like in its simplicity.

Is Coriolanus Shakespeare’s Greatest Tragedy?

David Haglund — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 23:02:00 GMT

In 1919, T.S. Eliot published an essay that elevates literary contrarianism to heights that have rarely been equaled. The central argument of “Hamlet and His Problems,” which first appeared in the Athenaeum and was later collected in The Sacred Wood, is that Hamlet, considered a masterpiece for centuries, is a shambles. Eliot goes on to insist that the Bard’s greatest tragedy is actually a play few peopled paid much attention to then or now: Coriolanus, just adapted for the screen by Ralph Fiennes.

Coriolanus

Dana Stevens — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 03:20:35 GMT

It’s always dicey when an actor makes his directorial debut, especially in a film starring himself. Thespian self-directing tends toward the blustery, for reasons that are easy to understand. Actors are used to working with words and gestures, not images and editing, and eliminating extraneous dialogue in the interest of a film’s overall flow might mean cutting the kind of show-stopping speech an actor dreams his whole life of performing. Throw Shakespearean tragedy into the mix, and you have an almost certain recipe for overcooked ham.

Red Tails

Forrest Wickman — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 01:21:51 GMT

You can’t help but root for Red Tails (Lucasfilm). Ostensibly a biopic about the prejudices faced by the Tuskegee Airmen, World War II’s African-American flyboys, Red Tails is really a fantasy about blowing up racist German airmen and then shouting, “Whoo!” George Lucas, who produced the movie, has said that he was forced to finance it on his own—to the tune of $58 million—when studios balked at the marketability of a film with all black leads. But while this may have been a passion project for the Star Wars director, Red Tails is sadly just as shoddy as the other recent products to emerge from Skywalker Ranch, condescending to its audience and stretching the boundaries of belief. Remember that scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, when a swastika-stamped Nazi crate explodes for no good reason (beyond the fact that the Ark hates Nazis)? Red Tails is like that, only less awesome, and considerably longer.

The Girl Choking a Guy to Death With Her Thighs Experience

Dana Stevens — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:05:00 GMT

Click on the audio player below to listen to Slate’s Spoiler Special podcast on Haywire after you’ve seen the movie.

Bleak Blockbusters

Grady Hendrix — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 22:47:19 GMT

Korea had a bad 20th century. First Japan occupied the country, then Allied forces occupied it, then a war ripped it in half, then North Korea became a dictatorship, then South Korea experienced a coup followed by a decade of military rule, followed by another decade of martial law, followed by the assassination of the president, another coup, another military regime, and, finally, in 1987, a return to constitutional government. So when Korea produces a movie about its history like the Korean War movie The Front Line, which opens in the U.S. this week, it tends not to be an inspirational story with choruses on the soundtrack and shafts of golden sunlight illuminating award-winning actors intoning words meant to stir men’s souls (see: Amistad, Patton, Glory). Instead, The Front Line is a film so bleak, cynical, and anti-authoritarian that it makes Oliver Stone look like Ron Howard. And get this: Koreans flocked to cinemas and made The Front Line one of last summer’s biggest hits.