Opening Everywhere: Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, If I Stay, When the Game Stands Tall
Opening Somewhere: Are You Here
FilmDrunk Suggests: Vince reviewed Sin City 2 and you can read it here. I’m very much looking forward to catching it on Starz at 2 AM on a weeknight in a few months. If I Stay, though… hoo boy, get this hunk of hot dump out of theaters so I don’t have to see another damn commercial for it, please. For the sports fan, there’s that movie with John from Person of Interest teaching kids that winning isn’t everything, because THANKS OBAMA.
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 40% critics, 79% audience
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
A Dame To Kill For isn’t likely to create converts out of those uninterested in the pulpy side of fiction. But it more than earns its keep in terms of lavishing love, mildly ironic as well as pretty damn earnest, on pumped-up noir. – Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post
Miller’s original comic-book frames serve narrative functions, but these movies are all grabby graphics, devoid of compelling style. – Michael Sragow, Orange County Register
Armchair Analysis: I think it’s pretty obvious what we get from Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez at this point. Regardless of the style and whether or not we needed another dip in the Sin City well, I am a very big fan of Eva Green and what she brings to the table.
If I Stay
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 42% critics, 79% audience
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
You want these people to have real challenges and messiness. But their lives don’t quite feel lived in; they feel exemplary. – Bilge Ebiri, Vulture
Moretz has a nicely calibrated energy and intensity, and the teen romance ups-and-downs of Mia and Adam’s relationship – are they really soul mates, or will he drop her when the right groupie shambles along? – feel authentically OMG-ish. – Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer
Armchair Analysis: Chloe Moretz is a fantastic young actress, but listening to her whiny voice in the commercials for this movie makes me hope that it’s two minutes long and ends with the doctor saying, “F*ck it, she’s not staying.”
When the Game Stands Tall
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 20% critics, 72% audience
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
When the Game Stands Tall is one of those cliché-riddled feel good movies that, by trying too hard to be inspirational, ends up as cloying and overly sentimental. – James Berardinelli, ReelViews
A true tale of high school football achievement becomes a strained, by-the-numbers grab bag of uplift in the Christian sports drama “When the Game Stands Tall.” – Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times
Armchair Analysis: I hate when people argue that sports movies are stupid, because The Replacements is one of the greatest movies ever made, but I think we need a five-year break from all sports movies just to refresh the genre. From there, Hollywood has to have a cap on how many sports movies can be made in a year, including comedies, dramas and feel-good crap. We must implode the genre to save it.
Are You Here
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 9% critics, 45% audience
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
Everything about Are You Here feels like a bottom-drawer script idea that was put together too casually and carelessly. – Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail
“Are You Here” doesn’t feel all there. – Tom Long, Detroit News
Armchair Analysis: I just saw a commercial for this On Demand and it sounded like Owen Wilson was doing a commercial for Match.com. Anyway, it sounds horrible.