items tagged with Marlon Wayans

ZERO DARK THIRTY

As an orchestrator of cinematic suspense, Kathryn Bigelow might currently be without peer in American movies. The sequences of Jeremy Renner dismantling explosives in the director’s Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker were miniature masterpieces of sustained excitement; despite our knowing, through much of the film, that it was too early for Renner’s Sergeant William James to be killed off, each masterfully shot and edited act of bomb disposal vibrated with legitimate threat. In Zero Dark Thirty – Bigelow’s and screenwriter Mark Boal’s fictionalized docu-drama about the decade-long search for Osama bin Laden – nearly every scene feels like a ticking time bomb. There is, of course, never any doubt about the narrative’s outcome, yet Bigelow’s gifts for composition and pacing ensure that you still watch the picture with rapt attention and dread. And blessedly, she’s also a spectacular entertainer. The movie is tough-minded and sometimes tough to watch, but even when Bigelow is fraying your nerves, she’s tickling your senses.

TWILIGHT

Let's just get it out of the way: No, I haven't read Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, and no, I didn't really care for the film version. But I won't begrudge the movie its popular appeal, because while watching director Catherine Hardwicke's and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg's take on Meyer's teen-vampire tale, it was pretty easy to see what would make the material absolutely irresistible to its target audience. For those of us who aren't its target audience, maybe not so much.

LITTLE MAN and YOU, ME, & DUPREE

Much as I try to prepare for every new cinematic experience with an open mind, sometimes it simply can't be done, as when the advertisements for a new release proudly proclaim: "From the creators of White Chicks!" So it was this past weekend, when Little Man, directed and co-written by White Chicks auteur Keenen Ivory Wayans, debuted. I'm not sure I can adequately express just how much I was not looking forward to this comedic opus; not only did I not laugh once at the grotesque White Chicks (nor, for that matter, at Wayans' Scary Movie and its first sequel), but as I recall, through the entire course of its running length, I actively frowned.
Read More About Stunted Adolescents: "Little Man" And "You, Me & Dupree"...