Month: February 2013

New in Theaters: ‘Identity Thief’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

identitythief1

identity-thief-posterFebruary is rarely the month for comedies. It seems more commonly to attract desultory action films and bottom-of-the-barrel dramas. So expectations were not that high for Seth Gordon’s Identity Thief, a better-than-it-could-be comedy that’s funny enough but could have easily stood to be 10-15 minutes shorter.

My full review is at Film Journal International:

Jason Bateman (who also has a producing credit) plays Sandy Patterson, a milquetoast mid-level worker at a Denver financial firm. He discovers that his identity has been stolen by a Florida woman who’s been maxing out his credit cards and even got arrested (as him). In one of those only-in-the-movies wrinkles, he decides to drive to Florida and bring the woman back to clear his name. The problem is that when he gets down there, Diana (Melissa McCarthy) has no intention of helping him out. She’d rather punch him in the throat and make a wheezing run for it…

Identity Thief opens wide on Friday.

You can see the trailer here:

New in Theaters: ‘Side Effects’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

sideeffects1

sideeffects-poster1In theory, this week’s pharma-thriller Side Effects is supposed to be Steven Soderbergh’s last feature film as director. He’s something of a workaholic, film-wise, so we’ll see if he sticks to that. But in any case, the film itself is an interesting swan song, not exactly career-defining but a neat piece of work regardless:

My full review is at Film Journal International:

The film’s ad campaign hinted at something vaguely related to Contagion, playing up the fact that both movies share a director (Soderbergh) and screenwriter (Scott Z. Burns), and that they are structured around a specific modern-day fear. While that pandemic film was more a fully realized, flesh-and-blood fictional story than it was a docudrama, Side Effects is really a sleekly constructed noir where the pharmaceutical topicality is mostly backdrop…

You can see the trailer here:

New in Theaters: ‘Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

mumia1Sometimes a film has a strong point to make. Sometimes that point is worth repeating for emphasis. And sometimes a film does little but repeat itself for two hours or so. That’s essentially what happens in Stephen Vittoria’s documentary Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary.

My full review is at Film Journal International:

The film’s thrust is that Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Philadelphia journalist currently serving a life sentence without parole for the 1981 shooting death of a Philadelphia policeman, is one of the great radical voices of our time. To prove this, Vittoria trots out everybody from actor Giancarlo Esposito (who staged a controversial performance of Abu-Jamal’s writing in the 1990s) to firebrand intellectuals like Cornel West and Angela Davis to state their case. Abu-Jamal may be what Vittoria and his interviewees think, but this is not a film that will convince anybody of it…

Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary is playing now in limited release.

You can see the trailer here: