'Hysteria' Review: Nothing Like a Feel-Good Victorian Vibrator Comedy
May, 17, 2012 1:23 pm | Comments On #Hysteria, Maggie Gyllenhaal, movie review, Movies, vibrator"Hysteria" is a fun fling of a movie about medical science at its shakiest. Literally.
This amusing period comedy chronicles the invention of the vibrator in the late Victorian era, when doctors used early versions of the electrical device to bring women to sexual satisfaction. This was done in the name of treating women thought to be suffering from “hysteria,” a vague diagnostic catch-all that covered pretty much all female complaints from melancholia to mania.
The male doctors, unable even to envision what to them was the then-preposterous notion that women might have sexual needs or could achieve actual orgasm, viewed the vibrator as a scientific device that relieved female patients of built-up, ahem, pressure, leaving them calm and appropriately docile.
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Read More'Girl in Progress' Review: Mom and Daughter Race to Come of Age
May, 10, 2012 11:09 am | Comments On #Eva Mendes, girl in progress, movie review, MoviesJust in time for Mother’s Day, “Girl in Progress” is providing illustrative lessons on how to be the antithesis of an exemplary Mom.
The movie’s not-so-model single mum eats the last of the cereal and milk before her adolescent daughter comes down for breakfast, is sleeping with a married man and leaves the kid alone overnight while crashing drunk at a new boyfriend’s house.
She then has the nerve to tell her daughter, “You need to grow up!”
In “Girl in Progress,” the daughter is trying to do exactly that, way too fast and way too soon for her own good.
This slight independent film, an...
Read More'The Perfect Family' Review: Even a Zealous Kathleen Turner Can't Save This Holy Comedy
May, 03, 2012 1:23 pm | Comments On #kathleen turner, Leah Rozen, movie review, Movies, the perfect family
As sure as the Pope resides at the Vatican, the Catholic Church won’t be organizing busloads of parishioners for fieldtrips to go see “The Perfect Family.”
That’s because this slight satirical comedy has as its center a woman so slavishly devoted to the church that she has worn blinders for years that keep her from seeing that her own family is falling apart. The film’s title, “The Perfect Family,” is meant to be ironic with a neon yellow highlighter through it.
A matronly Kathleen Turner tears with gusto into the role of Eileen Cleary, a seemingly devoted wife and mother who spends her...
Read More'The Raven' Review: Never Mind the Pendulum, This is the Pits
April, 26, 2012 11:28 am | Comments On #Edgar Allan Poe, jon cusack, Movies, The RavenThe raven had it right in Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous poem.
“Nevermore” is precisely what filmgoers will be vowing after sitting through “The Raven,” a trumped-up bit of gothic malarkey that proposes to show what the melancholy author was up to during his last few days.
Poe, for anyone who was sleeping through ninth grade English class, was a poet and short story writer who died in 1849 at age 40 after being found delirious on a street in Baltimore. The cause of death is unknown, though it has been attributed to alcoholism, cerebral hemorrhage, cholera and various other causes.
“The Raven” concocts another...
Read More'Lucky One' Review: It's Got Sparks (and a Grown-Up Zac Efron), But No Charm
April, 19, 2012 12:55 pm | Comments On #Leah Rozen, Movies, Nicholas Sparks, reviews, The Lucky One, Zach EfronNicholas Sparks is a brand name. He’s the author of mawkish, bestselling romantic novels that Hollywood keeps turning into even worse mawkish, romantic films, several of which have scored at the box office.
The list includes “The Notebook,” by far the best and most successful of the lot, as well as “Message in a Bottle,” “Nights at Rodanthe,” “A Walk to Remember,” “Dear John” and “The Last Song.”
The latest novel of his to arrive on the big screen is “The Lucky One.” A slack and predictable love story, which takes place mostly in rural Louisiana, it is the filmic equivalent of trudging through syrupy sorghum.
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Read More'Lockout': Prison Thriller Looks Cool But Plot's a Waste of Space
April, 12, 2012 11:57 am | Comments On #Guy Pearce, Lockout, Maggie Grace, Movies, reviewA never-fail joke is to add the words “between the sheets” after reading out the message in a fortune cookie, as in, “You will find happiness — between the sheets.”
Movie producers must think the same is true for the words “in space.” Take the most tired, hackneyed plot, one that has been recycled time and time again, and just freshen it up by moving all the action to outer space.
Latest case in point: “Lockup.” With French film maestro Luc Besson aboard as executive producer and story creator, this tough-guy action film is mostly set aboard a large, floating, maximum security prison way up there in the...
'The Hunter' Review: Willem Dafoe In Search of Elusive Tasmanian Tiger
April, 05, 2012 2:47 pm | Comments On #film reviews, Leah Rozen, Movies, The Hunter, Willem DafoeWillem Dafoe, his gaunt, weathered face all sharply chiseled angles, determinedly hikes through dense foliage and across mountain meadows, setting and baiting traps.
He’s in the mountains of Tasmania, the Australian island state that’s 150 miles south of the mainland.
Also read: 'American Reunion' Review: This Pie Has Become Tasteless
An American mercenary, he’s trying to catch a Tasmanian tiger, a wolf-like marsupial believed to have been...
Read More'Mirror Mirror' Review: Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho, It's Down the Drain We Go
March, 29, 2012 9:38 am | Comments On #Armie Hammer, Julia Roberts, Lily Collins, mirror mirror, Movies, reviews, snow white
Once upon a time, “Mirror Mirror” must have seemed like a good idea.
Retell the Snow White story, but add humor, attitude and contemporary language and really go to town on the sets and costumes. It’ll be like “Shrek” or “Hoodwinked!” but with live actors.
Somewhere between the pitch meeting and the movie's opening, this sadly earthbound fairy tale lost its happy ending. “Mirror Mirror” is minor minor.
It has its moments, many of them thanks to the late Oscar winner Eiko Ishioka’s...
Read More'Kid With a Bike' Review: Cannes Hit a Heartfelt, Powerful Fairy Tale
March, 15, 2012 11:35 am | Comments On #Leah Rozen, Movies, reviews, The Kid with a Bike
Life is teaching some lousy lessons to Cyril, an abandoned 11-year-old boy who can’t wrap his head around the fact that his single father has not only ditched him but, worse, sold his bicycle.
Cyril (Thomas Doret) is the pint-sized protagonist of “The Kid With a Bike,” an achingly heartfelt drama from directors-writers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the Belgian brothers with a string of impressive art house credits, including “La Promesse” and “L’Enfant.”
“Bike,” their latest -- like their other films,...
Read More'Salmon Fishing in the Yemen' Review: Quirky Fish Tale Lacks Bite
March, 08, 2012 10:48 am | Comments On #Movies“Salmon Fishing in the Yemen,” which works hard at being quirky, hooks a viewer early on but fails in the end fully to reel one in.
When you keep wishing a movie would devote more time to a supporting character rather than the leads, it’s never a good sign.
Also read: 'John Carter' Review: Lifeless on Mars'
That’s the case with this slight British dramedy in which Kristin Scott Thomas gives...
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Description
Leah Rozen was the film critic at People Magazine for thirteen years, until she decided that seeing six to eight movies a week was cruel and unusual punishment. She has also written for the New York Times and such still lamented though long departed publications as Spy, Manhattan Inc. and New York Woman.
