Word: culkin
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Trumpeted as "The Nutcracker With Macaulay Culkin," the new movie prompts dread in fans of the Christmas classic: what have they done to it this time? Rest assured, the ballet has survived intact, Tschaikovsky's score and Balanchine's choreography happily unadulterated...
Jessica Lynn Cohen is charming as Marie, and Peter Reznick is perfectly pesky as her little brother Fritz. And Mr. Culkin? He holds his own, perhaps thanks to his days as a student at the School of American Ballet, B.H.A. (Before "Home Alone"). However, he's not the most attractive little boy onstage, nor the best dancer, and other than being Macaulay Culkin, it's hard to understand why he's there. It's hard to understand why any of the movie is here, because so little of it is new or innovative. If the real ballet is inaccessible, this...
Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen, 7, the twin tykes of TV's Full House, will make a movie for Warner. In future negotiations, the kids will be represented by Macaulay Culkin's father Kit. Just kidding, Hollywood...
Ruben did interrupt the flow of the film when he overplayed the early moments of tension. If the whole audience knows from the start that Culkin plays an undercover killer, then it's none too tricky to produce tense moments auguring imminent disaster. Ruben dwells on each scary mask, toy gun, and childish threat, until Culkin's every mouthful at dinner appears redolent of latent monomania...
Meanwhile, Culkin himself acts precociously. He realizes that casual deadpan in a ten-year-old looks far more sinister than sidelong glances and wicked cackles, and so plays it straight. Culkin's calm in turn forms the perfect foil to the frenzied indignation of Wood, his fearless adversary. Splattered with tomato juice, frenetically pumping squash down the disposal, Wood manages to look far more twisted and dangerous than Culkin ever does. The dynamic of this role-reversal, excellently acted by both Wood and Culkin, generates all the tension in the film. The pair carries the production; all other players...