Houston Movie Reviews - Houston Movies Guide

Movie Reviews

Higher Learning

An Education and its star, Carey Mulligan, get good marks.

The title is a double entendre in An Education, the film version of British journalist Lynn Barber's memoir about the crash course she received... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: October 29, 2009

One Vampire Movie That Really Sucks

Cirque du Freak tries to get in on the trend. Fails.

Like the ominous fingernail moon early on in Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, the bloodsucker trend is again in a waxing phase thanks to... More>>

By Aaron Hillis

Published: October 22, 2009

Truth in Advertising

Somers Town gets at the heart of working-class London. And might sell some train tickets, too.

The title of Shane Meadows's Somers Town refers to the bleak, working-class neighborhood that lies in the shadow of London's St Pancras train... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: October 22, 2009

Let the Mild Rumpus Start!

Spike Jonze can't quite get the spirit of the Wild Things on screen.

Directed by Spike Jonze from a 400-word children's picture book first published in 1963, Where the Wild Things Are may be the toughest adaptation... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: October 15, 2009

Bad for the Jews

Self-hating or just everyone-hating? The Coen Brothers aim their contempt at MOTs.

The Yiddish shtetl shtick that opens Joel and Ethan Coen's new movie — a Jewish peasant stumbles on an old Hasid who may or may not be a... More>>

By Ella Taylor

Published: October 15, 2009

The Bee's Knees

With Andrew Bujalski's sure hand, the still-laid-back and lo-fi mumblecore matures with Beeswax.

Though no one's idea of an action film, Andrew Bujalski's Beeswax feels less charmingly aimless than its radically slight precursors Funny Ha Ha... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: October 08, 2009

Coco Puff

Chanel hagiography is so last season.

Anne Fontaine's Coco Before Chanel gives us Belle Époque Coco, opening in 1893 with a grim scene of the ten-year-old waif and her sister... More>>

By Melissa Anderson

Published: October 08, 2009

Half-Truth

Ricky Gervais can only get so far, or so funny, with The Invention of Lying.

The Invention of Lying's plot hook sounds like a pileup of Jim Carrey-Tom Shadyac concept comedies. The assumption is that there isn't much... More>>

By Nick Pinkerton

Published: October 01, 2009

The Awful Truth

Attn: Wall Street. Michael Moore is a Marxist (but he's still selling the same old shtick).

The ushers at a packed screening of Michael Moore's latest movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, came proudly decked out in T-shirts bearing slogans... More>>

By Ella Taylor

Published: October 01, 2009

Tone Poem

More harmonious than tumultuous, Bright Star is an ode to John Keats's great love affair.

Set in the bucolic suburbs of early-19th-century London, as fresh and dewy as a newly mowed lawn, Jane Campion's Bright Star recounts the love... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: September 24, 2009

Second Life

A Chinese factory reborn as condo heaven in 24 City.

Jia Zhangke is one of the world's preeminent filmmakers, an essentially contemplative director whose considerable talent is further amplified by... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: September 24, 2009

Fashion Victim

The September Issue captures Vogue's lioness at her peak. Goodbye to all of that!

When, in the early '00s, I worked as a freelancer for a publication two floors below Vogue — this was pre-Devil Wears Prada — each... More>>

By Melissa Anderson

Published: September 17, 2009

No Exclamation Point Necessary

The Informant! gets cute with massive corporate scandal and blows the story.

As evidenced by The Informant!, it's a hell of a tricky thing turning real-life pulp into floss sugar. The story of Archer Daniels Midland Co.... More>>

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: September 17, 2009

Thingamabob vs. Machine

Shane Acker creates an animated postapocalyptic hellscape in 9. WALL-E would never get out alive.

Early in Shane Acker's computer-animated debut feature 9, a diminutive anthropomorphic whatsit, with wooden hands, copper fingers and the titular... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: September 10, 2009

Labor Pains

With Extract, Mike Judge goes back to work.

Mike Judge began writing the screenplay for Extract not long after Office Space opened and closed in a matter of weeks in the late winter of... More>>

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: September 03, 2009

Soul Man

Paul Giamatti's wit is the heart of Cold Souls.

Sophie Barthes's clever metaphysical comedy Cold Souls has been dubbed "Being Paul Giamatti" more than once since its Sundance 2009 debut. But if... More>>

By Anthony, Kaufman

Published: September 03, 2009

Mr. Blood Red, Vol. 2

Two decades after the severed ear of Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino serves up Hitler's head on a plate.

Seventeen years ago, when Reservoir Dogs was setting American cinema on fire, Quentin Tarantino drove up to his favorite watering hole, a... More>>

By Ella Taylor

Published: August 27, 2009

Ruining Woodstock

Who knew three days of peace & music would oppress us for 40 years? (Plus: this movie)

"If you remember Woodstock, you probably weren't there," the expression goes. And if you were, can you please stop gassing on about it? Aquarian... More>>

By Melissa Anderson

Published: August 27, 2009

(Very) Oldboy

Park Chan-wook gets positively trendy with his latest: a vampire pic!

Finally, there's a vampire movie worthy of the title The Hunger — even if it arrives under the more potable name Thirst. Carnal appetite,... More>>

By Jim Ridley

Published: August 27, 2009

Snack Attack

Love is a battlefield in the powerful Postman rethink Jerichow

Retooled noir with less pulp than its original source, Christian Petzold's Jerichow wryly riffs on The Postman Always Rings Twice for... More>>

By Melissa Anderson

Published: August 27, 2009

Quentin's Final Solution!

In a triumph of his will, Tarantino makes Holocaust revisionism ridiculously fun in Inglourious Basterds.

Energetic, inventive, swaggering fun, Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds is a consummate Hollywood entertainment — rich in fantasy... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: August 20, 2009

Divide and Conquer

Alien invasion as apartheid metaphor? It works in District 9.

The aliens have been with us for 20 years already at the start of South African director Neill Blomkamp's fast and furiously inventive... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: August 13, 2009

Family Business

Papa Coppola returns, successfully, to the clan in Tetro.

As Tetro, Francis Ford Coppola's baroque genealogical melodrama, reaches its appropriately hysterical denouement, Vincent Gallo fixes his pale... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: August 13, 2009