items tagged with Misery

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

You know that handy, lame, relationship-ending sentiment “It’s not you; it’s me”? That’s what I feel like saying to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the new adaptation of the famed John le Carré novel. I readily concede that director Tomas Alfredson’s spy thriller is beautifully made, boasting engaged, cagey performances and a number of superbly shot set pieces. But for all of the film’s merits, I found myself hugely relieved when its end credits rolled, because Alfredson’s intensely complicated endeavor appeared so much smarter than I am that I took almost no pleasure from the experience. My issue isn’t that the movie is a dog. It’s that, for most of Tinker Tailor’s 125 minutes, I felt like a dog watching a movie.

FLIPPED

Rob Reiner’s 1986 Stand by Me told us that we’ll never have better, more meaningful friends than the ones we had when we were 12. His new film, Flipped, tells us that we’ll never have better, more meaningful romances than the ones we had when we were 12. It’s touching, if a little sad, that it’s all apparently been downhill for the director since hitting his teen years, but does Reiner’s nostalgic yearning somehow excuse his latest for being so bland, saccharine, and childish? Set just a few years after Reiner’s summer-of-’59 hit, Flipped is like Stand by Me without profanity, dirty jokes, unforced camaraderie, and Kiefer Sutherland. In other words, it’s just a stone’s throw away from utterly excruciating.

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY

Watching the early scenes of Capitalism: A Love Story, I found myself thinking, none too happily, that the bloom was finally off the rose, and that my fondness for Michael Moore documentaries had, at last, reached its end.

For the third year in a row, I've composed a list of 12 area-theatre participants who devoted their time, energy, and skills to numerous theatrical organizations and venues during the past year. And once again - happily and inspiringly - it hasn't been necessary to repeat names from one year to the next; local theatre, to the great good fortune of local audiences, never seems to run out of talent.

Playwright Tony Kushner's Angels in America begins its run at The Green Room Theatre on October 31, and to hear artistic director Tyson Danner describe it, he and executive director Derek Bertelsen couldn't have chosen a more appropriate production to open on Halloween.

"It's a monster," says Danner.