items tagged with Ehren Kruger

TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON

As long as Transformers: Dark of the Moon didn’t come off as the worst movie of the year – or rather, the worst movie of several years – it would stand as a notable improvement on 2009’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I’m greatly relieved, then, to say that Michael Bay’s latest, ultra-loud toy story is not the foul, nightmarish, jaw-dropping travesty that its predecessor was. Only half of it is.

THE BROTHERS GRIMM

Fairy tales, at their core, exert a powerful emotional pull, and at rare moments in Terry Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm, the director finds a visual equivalent to their hypnotic, wicked appeal. In this typically unclassifiable Gilliam excursion, the first glimpse of Little Red Hiding Hood traipsing through the gloomy forest is enough to give any adult viewer a shiver. Gilliam frames her entrance, and the later arrival of Hansel and Gretel, with ominous portent, the colors – that cape and hood especially – are enticing, and the forest sets have a creepy, storybook elegance. For the briefest of moments, you’re a kid again, enraptured by the haunting, suggestive simplicity of these stories; our first sightings of Little Red, Hansel, and Gretel bring with them a spark of tingly joy.

THE RING

Since she previously gave one of my all-time favorite film performances in Mulholland Dr., one of my all-time favorite films, it’s going to take a lot more than a cheesy little scare flick for me to write off Naomi Watts. But it must be said that in The Ring – a horror movie by Gore Verbinski, with a script by Arlington Road’s Ehren Kruger – Ms. Watts comes off as a very poor actress indeed.