NYC Film Critic

Salt
Directed by Phillip Noyce
Written by Kurt Wimmer
Starring Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chewitel Ejiofor
**1/2

Between The A-Team, The Karate Kid and Predators the summer of 2010 has been looking a whole lot like the summer of 1988.  And here’s one more ‘80s throwback for you, Salt, a new thriller about a squad of Soviet spies who launch a mission to destroy America from within.

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Inception
Written and Directed by Christopher Nolan
Starring Leonard DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe.
***

Heist movies are only as good as their climactic heist and in Inception, writer/director Chris Nolan comes up with an ingenious one.  Seizing on the gimmick of dreams Nolan stages a heist that takes place across four different dreamscapes, including a rain-soaked city, a posh hotel, a remote mountain bunker and, last but not least, a crumbling metropolis that exists on a level of dreaming that’s referred to in grave tones as “limbo”—a place from where few who venture ever return.

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The Kids Are All Right
Directed by Lisa Cholodenko
Written by Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg
Starring Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Mia Wasikowska, Josh Hutcherson
***
I wonder how many of the critics that are rushing to praise Lisa Cholodenko’s admittedly enjoyable comedy The Kids Are All Right as something fresh and different are also regular viewers of the popular ABC sitcom Modern Family.

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The Girl Who Played with Fire
Directed by Daniel Alfredson
Written by Jonas Frykberg
Starring Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Annika Hallin, Per Oscarsson
**

At this point, I’ve more or less decided that I’ll be following along with Stieg Larsson’s blockbuster Millennium trilogy via the film adaptations rather than the bestselling books.

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Despicable Me
Directed by Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud
Written by Ken Daurio and Sergio Pablos
Starring Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Will Arnett, Kristen Wiig
**1/2

This might sound strange, but the movie that came to mind while watching the new animated romp Despicable Me was Woody Allen’s “first” feature What’s Up Tiger Lily?

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Brief takes on four films currently in theaters.

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Knight and Day
Directed by James Mangold
Written by Patrick O’Neill
Starring Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Peter Sarsgaard and Viola Davis.
***

James Mangold’s new globe-trotting adventure/romance Knight and Day offers an interesting twist on The Bechdel Test, a three-step method of evaluating movies that often reveals just how sorely under-represented women are onscreen, particularly in big-budget Hollywood productions.  For those unfamiliar with the test, which takes its name from a 1985 comic strip by Alice Bechdel, the three steps a movie has to meet in order to pass are:

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Toy Story 3
Directed by Lee Unkrich
Written by Michael Arndt
Starring Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack and Ned Beatty
***1/2

You know, the world probably didn’t need a Toy Story 3.  After all, its predecessor, 1999’s Toy Story 2, brought the adventures of Woody, Buzz Lightyear and the rest of Andy’s toys to a wholly satisfying and very emotional conclusion.  Then again, one could argue that Toy Story 2 wasn’t necessary either since the first Toy Story—the film that put Pixar Animation Studios on the map way back in 1995—did the exact same thing.  And that’s what separates this exceptional filmmaking collective from most other production companies out there right now: they make sure that each film works entirely on its own terms, even when that film is a sequel.

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Reviews of three documentaries now in theaters.

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The Karate Kid
Directed by Harold Zwart
Screenplay by Christopher Murphey
Starring Jaden Smith, Jackie Chan and Taraji P. Henson
**

Released in the summer of 1984, The Karate Kid remains a convincing and well-crafted coming-of-age story, a genre that’s often runs the risk of succumbing to contrivance and corn.

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