items tagged with William Fichtner

JACK THE GIANT SLAYER

It happened to Hansel and Gretel. It happened to Red Riding Hood. It happened to Snow White. (It happened to a couple of Snow Whites, actually.) And now it’s Jack, of “... and the beanstalk” fame, who’s getting a pricey, kitschy, effects-filled makeover, serving as protagonist for director Bryan Singer’s Jack the Giant Slayer. At the rate this trend is going, I can hardly wait for the inevitable big-budget updating of The Pied Piper with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Marion Cotillard, and Harvey Fierstein taking on the role of a lifetime in The Frog King.

Every January, I share my numerical rankings of the 10 most enjoyable movies I saw during the previous year. I do not, however, share my numerical rankings of all the other titles I caught during those 12 months, as such a list would, I think, be hopelessly arbitrary, terribly self-indulgent, and something that only a person with too much time on his hands would attempt.

Let’s get cracking, shall we?

CEDAR RAPIDS

Prior my Saturday screening of Cedar Rapids, I’d seen 18 2011 releases, and my favorite of the mostly-slash-wildly underwhelming bunch – by a considerable margin – was Justin Bieber: Never Say Never. It’s tempting, then, to want to overpraise director Miguel Arteta’s raunchy yet genial comedy simply for being, you know, good.

DATE NIGHT

Playing husband and wife in the marital action comedy Date Night, Steve Carell and Tina Fey partner each other with such skillful ease, and radiate such genuine affection for one another, that my issues with the film have come to feel insignificant, and even a little petty. I had a not-bad time at director Shawn Levy's latest. But reflecting on the experience, I've found it awfully difficult to wipe the grin from my face; surrounded by an exceptional cast of second bananas, Carell and Fey are so genial and inventive together that it's easy to ignore the dully synthetic, determinedly formulaic Hollywood product they're appearing in.
Read More About ’Til Death Threats Do Us Part: "Date Night" And "Letters To God"...

MR. & MRS. SMITH

If it accomplished nothing else, Mr. & Mrs. Smith would easily nail a primal attraction for going to the movies: Getting to spend two hours staring at people who are infinitely better-looking than we are.