Word: new
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...sure, as he's been in dozens of movies and television series, but his legendary embarrassment of mental riches isn't going to embarrass anyone. In this movie, his ability to throw a right hook or dodge a flying fist matters just as much as his brain. Our new Holmes fights bare-chested in the street, and when he gets into trouble, he talks through his moves in his head, computing the angle of the blow and the damage it will inflict before actually striking, which we see in slow motion. (See the top 10 movies...
...plot is one of those dreary take-over-the-world routines. (Blackwood has "set his sights on America." Don't they all?) Even more surprising is that Robert Downey Jr. doesn't manage to overcome all that. In theory, he seems like such a good casting choice for a new Holmes; no actor of the appropriate age working today seems more quick-witted or verbally agile. Holmes was a late-19th-century bad boy, known for dipping into the cocaine here and there, and Downey Jr., reformed though he may be, is still our favorite bad boy. To imagine...
...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 has six: Day-Lewis, Cotillard, Dench...
Nine, the perplexing new film based on the 1982 Broadway musical, is inspired by Federico Fellini's landmark 1963 comedy-fantasy 8-1/2. After achieving a worldwide smash with La Dolce Vita, Fellini was besieged with questions about his next film. What would it be about? How will you top yourself, maestro? He had the bold brainstorm to make a movie about a man who can't make a movie. And since the notion was just slightly autobiographical, the movie would be made, in a way, by the man the movie is about. The premise contained its own absurdity...
...speaking or just staring darts at her philandering mate. Pain rarely seemed so proud, or hurt so regal, as in Cotillard's rendition of the melancholic rhapsody "My Husband Makes Movies." There, a lovely scene when the ex-actress Luisa, while watching screen tests Guido has made for his new project, sees him lavishing exactly the same attention on a new girl that he did on her when she was just starting in pictures; the kind words and gestures she thought were meant for her alone are revealed as a trick directors use to flattter an actress into giving...