KCRW's Film Reviews

The Tillman Story; Soul Kitchen

podmaster@kcrw.org (Joe Morgenstern) — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 21:44:00 EDT

A new documentary called The Tillman Story is actually three stories in one...

Soul Kitchen, made by the German-born Turkish filmmaker Fatih Akin, is a delirious farce, in subtitled German and Greek, that doesn't flag for a single one of its 99 minutes...

Mao's Last Dancer

podmaster@kcrw.org (Joe Morgenstern) — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 21:44:00 EDT

Sometimes the best way to see a movie is knowing nothing about the plot. At other times, a sense of what's to come increases the pleasure of watching the story unfold. Mao's Last Dancer is one of those other times...

Cairo Time; The Other Guys

podmaster@kcrw.org (Joe Morgenstern) — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 21:44:00 EDT

For quite a lot of time, the new film Cairo Time seems to be just a pretext for the camera to follow Patricia Clarkson around the Egyptian cpital and its spectacular surroundings...

Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg are hapless cops and mismatched buddies in The Other Guys, a summer movie that honors summer-movie conventions with a vengence...

The Kids Are All Right

podmaster@kcrw.org (Joe Morgenstern) — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 21:44:00 EDT

The Kids Are All Right is a thrillingly funny and casually profound film that Lisa Cholodenko directed from a script she wrote with Stuart Blumberg. Near the beginning, a teenage brother and sister talk about whether to make a fateful phone call. They're the suburban California children of lesbian mothers, and the brother has decided to seek out the sperm donor who was instrumental in bringing them into the world...

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse; The Last Airbender

podmaster@kcrw.org (Joe Morgenstern) — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 21:44:00 EDT

You'd never guess what the best part of the new Twilight saga turns out to be. It isn't blood-sucking monsters doing their thing, though there's some of that to feed the franchise...

Never mind that the little kid flapping his arms to whip up the waves looks like a pouty-faced version of Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice, or that The Last Airbender looks no worse if you take off your 3-D glasses...

Knight and Day; Restrepo

podmaster@kcrw.org (Joe Morgenstern) — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 21:44:00 EDT

Knight & Day is a movie of thunderous comings and goings. The pretext for it all is a little battery that the hero has to keep out of the hands of the bad guys. We're told that the battery is "the first perpetual energy source since the sun..."

Restrepo is a superb documentary by Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Jugner. It's about American soldiers in one of Afghanistan's most dangerous areas, the Korengal Valley. The action is worlds away from the centers of power where generals and their presidents are currently struggling to set policy...

Toy Story 3

podmaster@kcrw.org (Joe Morgenstern) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 21:44:00 EDT

While the entertainment conglomerates have been churning out ever cheesier sequels, Pixar has been the Fort Knox of honest feelings, and so it remains. Fifteen years after Toy Story burst upon the scene, Toy Story 3, the third film of the trilogy turns out to be gorgeously joyous and deeply felt?

Winter's Bone

podmaster@kcrw.org (Joe Morgenstern) — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 21:44:00 EDT

Instead of belaboring this week's pseudo-spectacular offerings from the studios -- a mediocre remake of The Karate Kid and a benumbing big-screen version of the A Team -- let me tell you about a movie that's really worth watching. It's called Winter's Bone...a classic, and spectacular for its humanity, austere beauty and heart-stopping urgency...

Splice; Ondine

podmaster@kcrw.org (Joe Morgenstern) — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 21:44:00 EDT

Joe Morgenstern, film critic for the Wall Street Journal, reviews Splice and Ondine.

Sex and the City 2; Father of My Children

podmaster@kcrw.org (Joe Morgenstern) — Fri, 28 May 2010 21:44:00 EDT

In previous installments of Sex and the City the ancient mystery of what women want was basically solved -- they want love, sex and designer clothes, not necessarily in that order. Now Sex and the City 2 reveals what Islamic women want...

I don't want to tell you too much about Father of My Children, which is playing at the Landmark -- you really should discover this French-language drama for yourself. It isn't saying too much, though, to cal lit beautiful, profound and phenomenally full of life...