Word: like
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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This gives Ritchie an opportunity to show the action twice, a technique that worked well enough to provide the backstory on shell games and heists in previous Ritchie movies like Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. But here it feels like he's just trying to maximize the violence because it's so much more fun for him than the brainy stuff. Holmes' actual crime-solving scenes slip by in an unmemorable instant; there's even one central mystery that's resolved by him dipping into a volume called The Book of Spells. Frankly, the guys...
...story begins with Tower Bridge in the final stages of construction - quick, where do you think the final fight sequence will take place? - and Dr. Watson (Jude Law) about to leave Holmes for a girl, Mary Morstan (Kelly Reilly). Holmes is jealous, to put it mildly, and they bicker like something out of a much lesser Judd Apatow movie. "My rooms," says Watson, referring to the Baker Street apartments they share. "Our rooms," Holmes retorts. "My dog," says Watson, referring to the corpulent white dog Ritchie cuts to for an occasional punchline. "Our dog," Holmes says tartly. They...
...crime involves a member of the House of Lords, Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong, his hair shaped in a shiny black cap that makes him look like one of the Fisher Price little people), with a penchant for the perverse and the supernatural. He's caught by Holmes in the film's opening scenes in the middle of some Satanic ritual and condemned to death by hanging, but threatens to return from the grave. Holmes' favorite dangerous lady, "the woman," Irene Adler is also on hand. She's played by Rachel McAdams, who is saucy and fetching...
...surprising that Ritchie, a director who essentially keeps making the same glib, lively movie over and over again (with the exception of 2002's Swept Away, which stands alone in defiant atrocity) would turn Holmes into an action hero. Nor does it feel like a sin against humanity or literature; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was fun but he wasn't exactly Henry James. What is surprising is how bland the results are. The explosions and action sequences have an odd cheapness to them and the central plot is one of those dreary take-over-the-world routines. (Blackwood...
...sensuality in "A Call from the Vatican," the surprising sass and vocal authority that Judi Dench brings to "Folies Bergere" and a nicely gaudy turn by the pop star Fergie as a zaftig whore who urges the perpetually pre-adolescent Guido to "Be Italian." A few numbers are duds, like Hudson's attempt (in a new number, "Cinema Italiano") to channel Madonna in her "Vogue" period. But each one is there to explain a situation, not advance the plot; they're ornamental, not organic. After a while, Nine plays like some Hollywood charity revue where Oscar-winning stars (the movie...