Boston Globe -- Ty Burr columns

Old Dogs

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-11-24T18:30:36Z

It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without a turkey, and in “Old Dogs,’’ we have the season’s blue-ribbon gobbler. A pitiful family comedy about two aging buddies forced to play daddy, it looks exactly like what you’d get if Robin Williams and John Travolta went out, got hammered, scrawled scenes on a bar napkin in random order, gave the napkin to “Wild ...

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-11-24T17:44:06Z

The wry stop-motion delight “Fantastic Mr. Fox’’ feels lovingly fussed over. With its papier-mâché skies, animal characters sporting glued-on tufts of fur, landscapes that seem to be cobbled together from spit and plasticine, it’s a defiantly handmade artifact - a tabletop movie.

The Road

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-11-24T17:41:10Z

In “The Road,’’ the world has ended with a bang and a whimper. Author Cormac McCarthy’s lean prose has been lifted off the printed page and laid carefully into the soundtrack like antique china in a packing crate. “The clocks stopped at 1:17,’’ says the narrator. “A long shear of light and then a series of low concussions.’’ That’s all ...

Bronson

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-11-19T17:54:17Z

‘Bronson’’ bills itself as the story of Britain’s most notorious living prisoner, Michael Peterson, who early on in his 35 years in jail - 30 of them in solitary confinement - gave himself the “fighting name’’ of Charles Bronson, after the Hollywood star of “Death Wish.’’ Really, though, “Bronson’’ isn’t a story in the traditional sense at all. It’s a ...

Planet 51

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-11-19T17:51:41Z

As a wise frog once remarked, it’s not easy being green. Not only are the emerald-colored extraterrestrials in “Planet 51’’ terrified by the appearance of a human astronaut on their home turf, they’re imprisoned in a cruddy, reductive version of “Happy Days’’ and forced to spout inane dialogue. Young children and adults with high pain thresholds will enjoy the movie ...

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-11-19T06:46:49Z

Sorry, girls: The thrill is gone. “The Twilight Saga: New Moon,’’ the second installment in Hollywood’s adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s mega-selling vampire romance series, is an anemic comedown after the full-blooded swoon of last year’s “Twilight.’’ Where the first film’s director, Catherine Hardwicke, plugged into Meyer’s vision of supernatural teenage lust with abandon, Chris Weitz is stuck with a sequel ...

Ten9Eight

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-11-12T17:17:54Z

The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship was founded 22 years ago by Bronx high-school teacher Steve Mariotti upon a few basic notions. Why do so many kids drop out of high school? Because they’re not learning what they need to know. What do they need to know? Business skills. NFTE thus teaches the fundamentals of entrepreneurship through a variety of programs ...

Pirate Radio

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-11-12T17:17:02Z

Sometimes history just isn’t as much fun as it should be. “Pirate Radio,’’ a rowdy, mostly hilarious British comedy-drama about the offshore radio stations that blared rock ’n’ roll to a desperate young UK audience in the 1960s, would much rather show us a good time than stick to the facts. Writer-director Richard Curtis (“Love Actually’’) has made a party, ...

The Maid

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-11-12T17:16:20Z

The unsettling Chilean drama “The Maid’’ opens with deceptive simplicity. In an upper-class kitchen in the suburbs of Santiago, a blank-faced, middle-aged maid (Catalina Saavedra) sits down to dinner. On the soundtrack we hear the family for whom she works bicker and snipe at each other in the adjoining dining room. The maid looks up, meets the camera’s gaze for ...

2012

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-11-12T17:13:57Z

I like to imagine that the director Roland Emmerich had a key transformative experience at the age of 7, when a relative visiting from Bavaria accidentally trampled his scale model of the Reichstag. Suddenly a light bulb went on over our young Teuton’s head as he realized: People will pay for this .

AD:

2009-11-12T17:13:57Z

A Christmas Carol

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-11-05T19:55:03Z

Every generation may get the “Christmas Carol’’ it deserves, from the all-dancing, all-singing horrors of “Scrooge’’ (1970) to the brash comic mugging of “Scrooged’’ (1988) to the sleaze of the recent “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.’’ (The best? All votes for George C. Scott and Mr. Magoo will be counted, but anyone who puts in the research knows the 1951 British ...

The Men Who Stare at Goats

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-11-05T18:33:40Z

‘The Men Who Stare at Goats’’ prompts an obvious question: Will there in fact be any goats stared at in this movie? And, if so, by whom and to what end? The answers - yes; George Clooney; to kill them by remote heart attack as part of a top-secret military initiative - are deliciously absurd even if you don’t know ...

Gentlemen Broncos

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-11-05T18:32:44Z

Jared Hess may be the first filmmaker to be bored by his own freaks. “Napoleon Dynamite’’ barely got by on the novelty of its ticked-off nerd hero and flattened sense of Middle American gothic, and it was genial enough to pick up a cult of school kids and adolescents who are always on the lookout for weird stuff, the better ...

An ecological disaster meets a media circus

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-11-04T17:09:01Z

In “Crude,’’ the anger onscreen spreads as slowly and inexorably as toxic sludge. The documentary follows a pending class-action lawsuit filed by 30,000 Amazon tribespeople against the US petro-giant Chevron for contaminating an area of land the size of Rhode Island. It’s a classic David vs. Goliath face-off and at first “Crude’’ looks like one more environmental agit-doc intended to ...

The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-10-29T16:26:52Z

It was 10 years ago that Troy Duffy, a nobody from nowheresville (all right, a Los Angeles bartender originally from New England), got his break when Miramax bankrolled his little Boston-set gangster movie. Then a documentary called “Overnight’’ revealed Duffy to be an abusive on-set monster. Then Miramax dumped him. Then he regrouped and made the movie on half the ...

What you don't see will scare you

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-10-29T16:24:05Z

To this critic, the most entertaining aspect to “Paranormal Activity’’ are the screams of rage coming from horror-movie aficionados at websites like the Internet Movie Database. They thunder: Why is this movie a hit? and Nothing happens! and (most damning of all) There’s no gore! One incensed commenter compares the movie to last year’s “Mirrors,’’ a film in which a ...

The Canyon

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-10-29T16:22:57Z

“The Canyon’’ is so singularly inept it gives you a whole new appreciation for the ept. A gracelessly written and filmed survival drama about bonehead yuppie newlyweds getting lost in the Grand Canyon, it’s aggravating enough to have you actively rooting for the couple’s demise, and the sooner the better. This isn’t a film, it’s a candidate for a Darwin ...

Art house cinema part of Boston’s scene again

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-10-29T02:59:21Z

Blue custom-sewn drapes have been installed alongside the new Super Glo white screen. Twelve Dolby Digital speakers ring the walls and, upstairs, a repurposed 35mm projector peers out the booth window. In the lobby, a recently constructed concession stand lies dormant, popcorn as yet unpopped.

Astro Boy

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-10-22T20:04:25Z

A new “Astro Boy’’? Why not? If the movies can bring Alvin and the Chipmunks back from the pop-culture dead, what’s wrong with digitally reviving a character who deserves a second career? Especially when the results are as promising, if as bizarrely conflicted, as this.

Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-10-22T16:51:12Z

So many vampires are crawling around movies and TV at the moment that any new kid on the block is forced to segment by age, gender, genre, and possibly political affiliation. If the “Twilight’’ series is aimed at adolescent girls whose hearts go arrhythmic at the thought of being ravaged by Edward Cullen, “Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant’’ is ...

Antichrist

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-10-22T16:49:19Z

By any and all measures you care to come up with, “Antichrist’’ is the Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier’s most extreme work yet. Reasonable and literate moviegoers - those who’ve been moved by and/or suffered through “Breaking the Waves,’’ “Dancer in the Dark,’’ and “Dogville,’’ among other assaults to the sensibilities - may take this as a cue to head ...

Amelia

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-10-22T16:46:47Z

It’s Oscar season and you know what that means: Time to wheel Hilary Swank out for her annual viewing. In “Amelia,’’ she plays the legendary aviator Amelia Earhart, and those big, horsey incisors of hers may at last have met their match.

Heart of Stone

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-10-21T16:57:18Z

‘Heart of Stone’’ is a heartbreaker: a documentary about an inner-city high school that shows how hard, how necessary, and how infinitely rewarding it can be to open doors for kids who didn’t know they were there. Technically the movie’s nothing much, but it makes Hollywood dramas like “Stand By Me’’ look tame and insipid.

The Stepfather

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-10-17T01:59:37Z

Once upon a time, in a far-off land called 1987, there was a B-movie thriller called “The Stepfather,’’ and it was very good: smart and witty and scary as hell. That was 22 years ago, though, and in 2009 there are millions of teenage girls willing to spend their parents’ money to be scared silly - and not by a ...

Chelsea on the Rocks

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-10-15T20:28:07Z

Watching “Chelsea on the Rocks’’ is like being buttonholed at a New York bar on a rainy afternoon by an ex-junkie three stools down who proceeds to lay on you an endless series of tall tales concerning people whose identity is never quite clear and who may no longer be alive. The longer the guy talks (which is as long ...

Where the Wild Things Are

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-10-15T19:31:40Z

Let’s dispense with the preliminaries: What do the experts think of “Where the Wild Things Are’’? As the end credits rolled, my 12-year-old daughter and her bestest friend turned to me with faces like the twin masks of comedy and tragedy on a Broadway playbill. One girl’s eyes were wet with tears of sadness and profound joy; “I loved it,’’ ...

AD:

2009-10-15T19:31:40Z

An Education

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-10-15T19:27:27Z

The animated opening credits of “An Education’’ promise untold delights, to us and to the movie’s heroine. Martinis and phonographs, jazz, and Paris - these are the tokens of adult bliss if you’re a smart, bored 16-year-old girl in 1961 London. They come with a price, of course, since what coming-of-age movie lets its main character off scot-free? That Lone ...

Couples Retreat

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-10-08T16:21:36Z

Husbands and wives of America: It’s Friday night and you’ve hired a baby sitter. The early-bird restaurant meal has been consumed; the multiplex beckons. Surely you want to see a frisky, fun-filled comedy about married couples arguing bitterly over the attention they’re not giving each other, the resentments they’re storing up, the sex they’re not having. No? Better beat a ...

A Serious Man

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-10-08T16:20:52Z

The other day, a colleague of mine called the Coen brothers “Stanley Kubrick’s grandchildren,’’ and he didn’t mean it as a compliment. He was referencing the cold, almost inhuman brilliance the filmmakers share; the cynicism that allows no emotion beyond the unforgiving laugh. (The songs of Steely Dan also came up, and that makes sense, too: Any major dude will ...

Where the wonder goes

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-10-04T02:54:33Z

Max has a single mom now, and the single mom has a boyfriend. One of the Wild Things sounds like Tony Soprano. The musical score is by the lead singer of the rock group The Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

No Impact Man

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-10-01T17:01:31Z

‘No Impact Man’’ is a very confused documentary that somehow puts its confusion to good use. On the surface it’s a portrait of a wannabe eco-hero: Colin Beavan, a Manhattan husband and father who recently vowed to lead his family in a yearlong experiment to live with as little environmental impact as possible. That means no motorized travel, no electricity, ...

The Boys are Back

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-10-01T16:43:36Z

Clive Owen weeps! It may not be up there with “Garbo laughs,’’ but the star’s turn as a grieving single dad in the earnest and rather too painless drama “The Boys Are Back’’ is a game-changer. In the decade since “Croupier’’ popped him loose, Owen has fashioned a brooding, intelligent action-hero persona in upscale thrillers like “Children of Men’’ and ...

Zombieland

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-10-01T16:43:14Z

Sometime in the last 20 years zombie slapstick became a primary genre of the movies, right up there with action, teen musicals, and bad Jennifer Aniston romances. It carries expectations, it observes rules, and, as with Oscar-bait period dramas, the Brits have a tendency to do it better. At least they did with “Shaun of the Dead’’ in 2004.

The Invention of Lying

Ty Burr, Globe Staff — 2009-10-01T16:40:26Z

With “The Invention of Lying,’’ the British comic actor Ricky Gervais has come up with a wickedly funny idea for a movie - and then purged the wickedness right out of it. A sharp-edged, cameo-studded fantasy set in an alternate Earth where everyone tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, the film explores the power of ...