Stay
The Libertine
Cheaper by the Dozen 2
Stay
With director Marc Forster ("Monster's Ball", "Finding Neverland") and writer David Benioff ("25th Hour") at the wheel and a talented cast including Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts in the backseat, this should have been a better movie. And had "Stay" been made some 20 years ago, perhaps the plot twist at the end wouldn't seem like a mediocre rehash of what so many better movies have already done in the last two decades. Forster's intangible, dream-like vision is far more disorienting than intriguing. "Stay" does have some seriously good eye candy, but the film's structure seems a little over-calculated. It's a boring movie, really. The story simply isn't engaging, and the characters are so unrealistic and cold you don't really care about what will happen to any of them.
( Julie Vinten )
Sam Foster (Ewan McGregor) is a sychiatrist with a nice orderly life. But one day talented art student Henry Letham (Ryan Gosling) comes along and calmly explains that he will kill himself at a set hour in a few days. As Foster races around trying to save him, things start turning so strangely that he ends up doubting whether his own life is actually real. The story begins with some vague promise, but by the end it's just downright embarrassing. The supposedly surprise ending is one of the most preposterous conclusions to a film I have seen in quite some time. "Stay" clearly wants to be something special but it fails miserably both as art and as entertainment. Perhaps, a more apt title would have been "Run Away."
( Tim Ochser )
The Libertine
Set in a gritty 17th-century London, "The Libertine" works well as an atmospheric period piece as well as a finely laid out love story. The story centers on a playwright and much of it takes place on a theatre stage, which helps to justify the movie's hyper-dramatic and affected expressions. The destructive love story at the center of the movie is challenging and complex. Johnny Depp has not completely shaken off his Captain Jack Sparrow 's the jiggling wonder he gave us in "Pirates of the Caribbean" 's but he is pretty convincing here as John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester. That said, his opposite, Samantha Morton, somehow manages to outplay him in every scene.
( Julie Vinten )
"The Libertine" is an admirable attempt to get to grips with the infamous second Earl of Rochester, John Wilmot (Johnny Depp), whose tongue ran riot in Restoration England during the reign of Charles II (John Malkovich). The film tries its best to recreate the period, although it takes some major liberties with the subject matter. Depp gives a decent performance, with strong support from Samantha Morton as the unconventional actress Elizabeth Barry. The script strives to capture the heady spirit of the time, but the film lapses at the end. ilmot's overly dramatic demise into disgrace, illness and deathbed redemption is suspiciously reminiscent of 21st-century Hollywood rather than 17th-century England.
( Tim Ochser )
Cheaper by the Dozen 2
It would have been so very nice if I could have written: "My, that first 'Cheaper by the Dozen' was absolutely awful, but this sequel is a wonderful cinematic achievement." Unfortunately, the second installment about this large brood of children sired by Steve Martin is every bit as bad as its predecessor. As was the case the first time around, there just isn't much fun about a set of parents with 12 screaming brats and an unruly dog they don't know how to care for. If there's a story - one with a beginning, a middle and an end - here, I didn't see it. The movie is just made up of several sketches that are neither funny nor entertaining. "Cheaper by the Dozen 2" is an empty basket of inches.
( Julie Vinten )
Steve Martin's face is starting to seriously haunt me after having to endure "Shop Girl," "The Pink Panther" and "Cheaper by the Dozen 2" all within the space of a few weeks. Doesn't the man have any pride left? Can't he find a more dignified way of making a living? "Cheaper by the Dozen 2" is one of those wearisome family comedies that Hollywood churns out by the dozen every year. It's so sickeningly formulaic that you can sit there and guess the lines every character says right before he or she says it. In fact, it's so predictable that you can even see the film without having to see it. Why not give the ticket money to a local orphanage instead of donating it to 20th Century Fox?
( Tim Ochser )
