items tagged with Tim Blake Nelson

CHRONICLE

Part superhero (and -villain) origin fable and part teen-angst melodrama, Chronicle concerns three high-schoolers who venture down a mysterious hole in the Earth and emerge with telekinetic powers, and the best thing about the movie is that its leads subsequently behave just as high-schoolers likely would in such a situation.

THE INCREDIBLE HULK

Up until its final reel, when the movie lapses into a tiresome big-screen adaptation of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, The Incredible Hulk is a pretty entertaining superhero blockbuster, in large part because it doesn't much feel like a typical superhero blockbuster.

HOLES

Here’s something I never thought I’d write about a live-action family movie from Disney: I hope it makes tons of money and spawns sequels galore. The movie in question is Holes, and here’s something else I never thought I’d write: Thus far, it’s easily the finest movie of the year.

THE GOOD GIRL

The Good Girl is the most fun I’ve had at the movies since Spider-Man and, with the possible exception of Y tu mama tambien, the finest movie I’ve seen all year, and I can’t begin to describe how shocking that is.

MINORITY REPORT

Last summer, when Steven Spielberg’s science-fiction epic A.I.: Artificial Intelligence was released, it was greeted with a few rave reviews but near-universal audience apathy. Working from material shepherded by the late Sultan of Cynicism, Stanley Kubrick, Spielberg directed the film as if Kubrick’s ghost perched on his shoulder, demanding that every scene be moodier, uglier, and above all slower than the one than preceded it; the film was brilliantly designed but emotionally vacant, and it drained you of your energy.