Email Author L.A. Weekly Film Critics

2009 Stories by L.A. Weekly Film Critics

• Film Reviews: Blood: The Last Vampire, Herb & Dorothy, I Love You Beth Cooper

  published July 9, 2009

  BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE The studios continue to dilute the meaning of “Asia Extreme,” and self-serious commercial... More >>

• Movie Reviews: The Girl From Monaco, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Kambakkht Ishq, I Hate Valentine's Day

  published July 2, 2009

  GO  THE GIRL FROM MONACO There’s not much to this thin, sun-drenched concoction about a straight-arrow Paris... More >>

• Movie Reviews: Cheri, My Sister's Keeper, The Stoning of Soraya M.

  published June 25, 2009

  CHERI “For the first time in my life, I felt morally certain of having written a novel for which I need neither blush... More >>

• Los Angeles Film Festival: Reviews, A to Z

  published June 18, 2009

  AFTER THE STORM (USA) Following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, actor and writer James Lecesne wanted to go to New... More >>

• Movie Reviews: The End of the Line, The Proposal, Whatever Works

  published June 18, 2009

  GO  DAYTIME DRINKING The early warnings of Noh Young-seok’s debut feature from the festival circuit... More >>

• Movie Reviews: Food, Inc., Imagine That, Moon

  published June 11, 2009

  THE ART OF BEING STRAIGHT Misunderstood, reviled and even doubted to really exist, bisexuals throw a wrench in binary thinking... More >>

• Movie Reviews: Land of the Lost, My Life in Ruins, Pressure Cooker

  published June 4, 2009

  CORKED! With their loose-limbed naturalness and improvisational flair, the best mockumentaries, from The Office to... More >>

• Movie Reviews: Burma VJ, Up, What Goes Up

  published May 28, 2009

  GO  BURMA VJ How we view the relationship between traditional and new media should forever be changed by Danish... More >>

• Movie Reviews: Dance Flick, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, Easy Virtue

  published May 21, 2009

  GO  THE BOYS: THE SHERMAN BROTHERS STORY Disney musicals from the ’50s and ’60s have a push-pull... More >>

• Movie Reviews: Big Man Japan, Management, Not Forgotten

  published May 14, 2009

  BIG MAN JAPAN Hitoshi Matsumoto, one-half of a legendary Japanese comic duo, debuts as big-screen director/star with this goof... More >>

• Movie Reviews: Adoration, Julia, Little Ashes, Revanche

  published May 7, 2009

  ADORATION Atom Egoyan’s 12th feature film offers a typically kaleidoscopic rumination on voyeurism, videography, the... More >>

• Movie Reviews: Battle for Terra, Il Divo, X-Men Origins: Wolverine

  published April 30, 2009

  BATTLE FOR TERRA A spiritual sequel to the equally hapless Delgo — which sold pacifism in animated form to an... More >>

• Movie Reviews: Earth, The Garden, Obsessed

  published April 23, 2009

  CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE A glue-huffing variant on the gimmick-noir D.O.A., 2006’s Crank was a riotous demonstration of the... More >>

• Movie Reviews: American Violet, Crank: High Voltage, Sleep Dealer

  published April 16, 2009

  AMERICAN VIOLET A docudrama with a good heart but a heavy hand, American Violet isn’t shrinking. Changing the real names of... More >>

• Movie Reviews: Anvil! The Story of Anvil, Dragonball: Evolution, Hannah Montana: The Movie

  published April 9, 2009

  GO  ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL With testimonials from the likes of Lemmy Kilmister, Lars Ulrich and Slash, you’d... More >>

• Movie Reviews: Alien Trespass, Paris 36, Sugar

  published April 2, 2009

  ALIEN TRESPASS What’s most admirable about onetime X-Files producer R.W. Goodwin’s Alien... More >>

• Movie Reviews: The Haunting in Connecticut, Three Monkeys, 12 Rounds

  published March 26, 2009

  MONSTERS VS. ALIENS is strictly playbook material for Dreamworks, makers of kidult-friendly pop-culture mash-ups:... More >>

• Movie Reviews: The Great Buck Howard, Perestroika, Knowing, Sin Nombre

  published March 19, 2009

  GO  EXPLICIT ILLS A tender ensemble slice of inner-city Philly life to wash out the foul taste of Crossing... More >>

• Movie Reviews: Miss March, Race to Witch Mountain, Sunshine Cleaning

  published March 12, 2009

  THE CAKE EATERS There’s no kind of wonderful in Mary Stuart Masterson’s directorial debut, yet however slight her... More >>

• Movie Reviews: An American Affair, Phoebe in Wonderland, 12

  published March 5, 2009

  AN AMERICAN AFFAIR Even the most insatiable JFK-conspiracy-theory freak won’t get much juice out of William Sten... More >>

• Movie Reviews: Jonas Brothers: The 3-D Concert Experience, Must Read After My Death, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li

  published February 26, 2009

  BOB FUNK Movies — especially inconsequential, earnest comedies like Bob Funk — about how people... More >>

• Movie Reviews: Delhi-6, Fired Up, Madea Goes to Jail

  published February 19, 2009

  BILLU A troop of top Hindi character actors work overtime trying to goose the entertainment value of this surprisingly... More >>

• Movie Reviews: Confessions of a Shopaholic, Friday the 13th, Gomorrah

  published February 12, 2009

  CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC The Confessions of a Shopaholic we need right now would feature John Thain begging the... More >>

• Movie Reviews: Fanboys, The Pink Panther 2, Push

  published February 5, 2009

  GO ABSURDISTAN A droll comic fable about a water shortage, a battle of the sexes and the teenage... More >>

• Movie Reviews: New in Town, Taken, The Uninvited

  published January 29, 2009

  GO  THE CLASS Compare and contrast Laurent Cantet’s terrific The Class (which reopens this... More >>