Leonard Maltin

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film review: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of The Dawn Treader

By Leonard Maltin
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December 10, 2010 5:00 AM
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2 Comments

After a great start with the adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe and a somewhat less enthralling (and war-laden) follow-up, Prince Caspian, the big-screen version of The Chronicles of Narnia rebounds with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

By Leonard Maltin
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December 3, 2010 5:30 AM
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5 Comments

Jim Carrey is a talented man but, like other performers whose gifts are wide-ranging and difficult to pigeonhole, he needs good material and a guiding hand. He has found both in I Love You, Phillip Morris. In fact, I think he gives the best performance of his career in this provocative and unusual film from writer-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who are best remembered for writing Bad Santa. This movie isn’t likely to win over too many of Carrey’s mainstream-comedy fans, or fundamentalists who don’t heed the R rating, but I think it’s a first-rate piece of work.

By Leonard Maltin
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December 3, 2010 5:15 AM
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25 Comments

Evaluating any movie is a matter of personal taste. Filmmakers who deal in the extreme naturally provoke extreme reactions. That’s my way of saying that I couldn’t stand Black Swan. In fact, I had a violent response to the film, which I saw in its debut screening at the Telluride Film Festival over Labor Day weekend.

By Leonard Maltin
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November 25, 2010 5:30 AM
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8 Comments

I sometimes recoil when people start spreading Oscar buzz about a movie I haven’t seen—or even had a chance to see—yet, but I’m willing to forgive this year’s campaign for The King’s Speech because it’s such a terrific movie. There are times when I look around me and get the feeling that civilization, as I know it, is coming to an end. Then a film like this arrives on the scene and restores my faith, not only in movies but in humankind itself.

By Leonard Maltin
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November 24, 2010 5:36 AM
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5 Comments

I approach each new Disney film with a combination of eagerness and apprehension: will it be as good as I want it to be? Can “the new guys” carry the torch lit by Walt and his colleagues so many years ago? Where Tangled is concerned, I knew within minutes that the answer was yes. I could tell from the look and sound of the film that it had the qualities people have always sought in a Disney animated fairy tale. I felt like I was home. Yet Tangled is a completely contemporary film that puts its own spin on the source material, with clever staging, hip humor and spectacular action scenes.

By Leonard Maltin
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November 24, 2010 5:35 AM
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1 Comment

After far too many inferior romantic comedies it’s exhilarating to encounter a bittersweet, romantic drama like Love and Other Drugs. With a fresh, provocative backdrop and an intriguingly vulnerable heroine, this is a sexy, adult piece of entertainment. Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway sink their teeth into a pair of meaty, satisfying roles that stretch their abilities.

By Leonard Maltin
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November 24, 2010 5:30 AM
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3 Comments

The people behind Burlesque did at least a few things right. First, Cher has an amazing screen presence, and a way with dialogue that seems absolutely effortless. (I’ll admit, it takes some adjustment to accept her now-frozen face, but one either accepts Cher as it or not at all.) Then they hired Stanley Tucci to play her gay best friend and right-hand man, essentially reprising the role he essayed so well in The Devil Wears Prada. No matter—he brightens every scene he’s in, and delivers his lines with the panache of a true master. But these old pros have to swim up-tide against a screenplay that’s so hokey and weather-beaten you have to wonder how it got approved by a major studio.

By Leonard Maltin
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November 19, 2010 5:15 AM
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0 Comments

When a film is based on a fascinating true story, and marshals grade-A talent on both sides of the camera, it automatically gets my attention. Made in Dagenham is inspired by a real-life labor struggle—apparently little remembered, even in England—that is both timely and relevant today. There is no reason on earth the results shouldn’t have been stronger. The raw material has all the makings of great drama: in 1968, female workers at the vast Ford Motor Co. factory in a suburb of London went on strike after being reclassified as unskilled laborers, with a commensurate reduction in salary. Women weren’t taken seriously in the workforce, and their actions have wide, and unexpected, reverberations. Sally Hawkins (who won worldwide recognition for her starring role in Mike Leigh’s Happy Go Lucky) does a great job as a—

By Leonard Maltin
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November 18, 2010 5:42 AM
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5 Comments

In the old days of Saturday matinee serials, audiences faced with cliffhanger endings took comfort in knowing that the story would be resumed one week later. The same can’t be said for the latest Harry Potter picture, which offers much incident but no resolution: for that, we all have to wait until next year. If you’re a dedicated Potter fan, you’ll have to take what you can from this one—mainly, the pleasure of spending time with its leading characters and the young actors who play them. Following J.K. Rowling’s narrative, there are no scenes at Hogwarts’ Academy. This denies us the opportunity to revel in seeing the finest British actors alive in the vast Potter ensemble; we get only token appearances from Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter, Robbie Coltrane and a handful of others, while Maggie Smith, as Professor McGonagall, is absent altogether.

The movie starts out on the right foot, as Harry—now marked for death by the evil Lord Voldemort—is surrounded by his—

By Leonard Maltin
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November 12, 2010 5:30 AM
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1 Comment

It would be enough to report that I’ve just seen a smart, funny independent feature, but Tiny Furniture heralds the arrival of a smart, funny new voice to the filmmaking scene—which is even better news. Writer-director Lena Dunham also stars in the film along with her mother and sister, playing, respectively, her mother (an artist who photographs miniatures) and sister (a high school student who’s just won a national poetry prize). It would be intimidating for anyone to compete, let alone coexist, with this duo.

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Categories

film review: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of The Dawn Treader

film review: I Love You, Phillip Morris

film review: BLACK SWAN

film review: King's Speech

film review: TANGLED

film review: Love And Other Drugs

film review: Burlesque

film review: Made In Dagenham

film review: HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART ONE

film review: Tiny Furniture

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