Yearly Archives: 2011

The Muppets review

Directed by James BobinWritten by Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller, based on characters by Jim HensonThe appeal of The Muppet Show is hard to quantify. I'm not talking about the Muppets themselves. It's easy to see why people like them, the cute puppets adored by all ages. But the TV show specifically, the one that…Read More

Melancholia review

Written and directed by Lars von TrierI've said it before and will again: von Trier is a provocateur. That he's from Denmark, my mother's homeland, the most prominent director to emerge from 1995's Dogma movement—a rigorous aesthetic that he's long since shirked—makes his films interesting to me, but I rarely want to see them again.…Read More

10 Great Christopher Walken roles

image by Martin Schoeller Christopher Walken is one of those actors who in his older age is defined by his oddness, by all the people who do impressions of him. Kevin Spacey, Kevin Pollack and Jay Mohr have gotten a lot of mileage on impersonating the guy. Just head over to YouTube if you don't…Read More

I saw Shame

On Monday morning I saw a preview of Steve McQueen's Shame. This is the second film from British auteur McQueen, following his picture Hunger from a couple of years back. Shame is a powerful look at a Manhattan corporate type's sexual compulsion. It's chilly, intense and quite frank in its sexual content, with lots of…Read More

Martha Marcy May Marlene review

Written and directed by Sean DurkinMarcy May (Elizabeth Olsen) is one of many young people working at a farm in what looks like upstate New York. We notice it's a bit weird from the get-go: the women prepare the meals and sit outside the dining room while the men eat first. Then the women get…Read More

The Rum Diary review

Directed by Bruce RobinsonWritten by Robinson, adapting the Hunter S. Thompson novelThis is telling: two posters from The Rum Diary, the brand new movie starring Johnny Depp as Paul Kemp, the hero of Hunter S. Thompson's Puerto Rico-set novel. There's this onewhich hides Depp but plays up hotel-room carnage. Playing to fans of The Hangover,…Read More

Dave Howlett’s House of Haunts

Elsewhere on this site is Dave Howlett's excellent House of Haunts blog, where he reviews the horror movies he's watching. Regular Flaw in the Iris readers will recognize his name as he has contributed to this blog, too. Through the month of October he's been watching a horror movie a day, the results of which…Read More

The Ides of March reviewed

Directed by George ClooneyWritten by Clooney, Grant Heslov andBeau Willimon, based on the play Farragut North by WillimonLet's start by talking about Aaron Sorkin.Maybe that's not fair. Because, lets face it, Sorkin is the king of political thrillers. Even when they're actually about sports, like Moneyball, or about crazy zeitgeist-chasing technology, like The Social Network,…Read More