WFIU: Movie Reviews Podcast

What's the point of a movie review, when the film has already opened and grossed over $200 million between foreign and domestic? What is there left to say when the critics have already spoken, ladling on Iron Man panegyrics enough that you'd think the film is the Second Coming? I think what's left to say is this: you deserved more.

The script for 88 Minutes should never have been filmed. It's a cretinous, slovenly, and slack document as shot full of holes as a paper target at a gun range. And yet John Avnet, primarily a producer and only rarely a director, saw something in it, and actually came up with a point of view on the material.

WFIU Movie Critic Peter Noble Kuchera reviews "The Ruins."

Snow Angels is the fourth film from 32-year-old wunderkind David Gordon Green. It has been carefully adapted by Green, in a style like that of Todd Field of In the Bedroom, from a book by Stewart O'Nan. The film follows several characters as they try to make sense of their lives and relationships in the drab and frozen suburban wastes of an un-named northern state.

Martin Scorcese's direction on his new movie, a Rolling Stones concert filmed in large format Imax, is largely utilitarian. It's all he can do to keep up.

WFIU Movie Critic Peter Noble Kuchera reviews "In Bruges."

Michael Haeneke's film "Funny Games" is 98 percent a superbly crafted (and crafty) art house horror film. It is also 2 percent a deconstruction of itself. The problem is, the 2 percent is like a sliver; you pick at it, crippling your reaction to everything else.

WFIU Movie Critic Peter Noble Kuchera reviews "Be Kind, Rewind."

WFIU Movie Critic Peter Noble Kuchera reviews "Be Kind, Rewind."

If you're going to mount a major production, give it to someone less literal, with a proven track record in image-making. And make sure he isn't afraid of the dark.