Roger Ebert Movie Review - 01/01/10, 14:40

Roger Ebert Movie Review

Weekend Box Office: December 25-27, 2009

Avatar tops the box office with $75.6 million

Daily Box Office: Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Avatar tops Wednesday's box office with $18.5 million

The Joy of Singing / *** (No MPAA rating)

"The Joy of Singing" (Unrated, 96 minutes). The goofiest thrill-sex-music-spy movie in many a moon, with a surprising amount of nudity and an even more surprising amount of song. Secret info about uranium is missing, and spies from the Middle East, France and Russia are all assigned to take the same voice class as the widow of the man who last had the secrets. Why? Ask, and you're done for. The movie cheerfully makes little sense, but given its death toll all the spies become very serious about their lessons. Three stars

Crazy Heart / **** (R)

"Crazy Heart" (R, 112 minutes). Jeff Bridges is a Best Actor front-runner for his performance as Bad Blake, a broke-down, boozy country singer with a stubborn pride. Maggie Gyllenhaal finds all the right notes as a much younger reporter who comes for an interview and stays to be kissed. The songs, the singing, the milieu, the wisdom about alcoholism, are all convincing. The stuff of countless country songs, made true and new. With Robert Duvall and Colin Farrell in key supporting roles. Written and directed by first-timer Scott Cooper. Four stars

Sherlock Holmes / *** (PG-13)

"Sherlock Holmes" (PG-13, 128 minutes). Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr), who has survived so much, here survives an onslaught of special effects orchestrated by Guy Ritchie, in a CGI London never more dark and gloomy. He and Watson (Jude Law) are on the trail of the Satanist Lord Blackwood, seemingly hanged and buried, but now returned from the grave. Will discomfort traditionalists, but Downey and Law perfect an Odd Couple relationship and are surround by the atmospheric and fantastical. With Rachel McAdams as Irene Adler, reportedly the only woman to ever touch Holmes' heart. Three stars.

It's Complicated / **1/2 (R)

"It's Complicated" (R, 120 minutes). Meryl Streep is a millionaire bakery owner in Santa Barbara who begins a warm friendship with her architect Steve Martin) just as her ex-husband (Alec Baldwin) comes back into her love life. This inspires close calls, confusion among their children, fascination from her girl friends, some funny scenes, and too many that belong on the day-old shelf. Two and a half stars

A Single Man / *** (R)

"A Single Man" (R, 101 minutes). Colin Firth as a homosexual Brit teaching college in Los Angeles in 1962 and privately mourning his lover, who has been dead for eight months. He maintains an impeccable facade as he goes through what we have reason to suspect may be the last day of his life. Julianne Moore is the wealthy woman with whom he maintains a sad friendship. A flawless performance, but director Tom Ford so successfully portrays his reserved exterior that he shuts us away from what must be shrieks of grief and anger, bottled up. Three stars

Nine / ** (PG-13)

"Nine" (PG-13, 112 minutes). My problem may be that I know Fellini's "8 1/2" too well. Your problem may be that you don't know it well enough. Both of us may be asking, who exactly was "Nine" made for? This is a big-scale version of the 1982 Broadway production, but lacking the passion, the guilt, the innate music, of the great Fellini musical. And it doesn't have a single great song. The role played on film by Marcello Mastroianni and onstage by Raul Julia is now played by--Daniel Day Lewis? Two stars.

Movie Answer Man: What color were Zuzu's petals in
"It's a Wonderful Life"? Easy!

Q. Upon asking my 25-year-old sister what she would like for Christmas, she responded with the following: " 'It's a Wonderful Life' on DVD -- but make sure it's in color!" Disgusted, I asked her why she would ever want to watch the colorized version over the black-and-white original. Her response made me laugh. "Well, how am I supposed to tell what color Zuzu's petals are?" My family did grow up watching the colorized version of the Capra classic, but I have since returned to watching it in black and white, and find it less nauseating on the whole. The colorized version seems hardly colorized at all; it's merely a mix of hodgepodge faux "colors" that clash when they appear together on screen. I kind of like not knowing what color Zuzu's petals really are. But then again, when one watches the distorted colorized version (shame on you, Ted Turner), is it even possible to tell then? Jordan C. Wellin, South Bend, Ind. A. About colorization, Bette Davis said, "Nobody had to be told that Jezebel's dress was red." But as to your question, Zuzu's petals were a lovely pink in the center, surrounded by a deeper hue, and does your sister have small feet? http://j.mp/594k8l

Commentary: The man who is scaling
Mt. Criterion film by film

I asked myself, who is this guy named Matthew Dessem? I'd be doing reading for one of my Great Movies pieces, and I'd encounter an essay by him on a site called the Criterion Contraption. The Criterion Collection is the standard bearer among high-quality DVDs, but he wasn't associated with them, except in an indirect way: He has set himself the goal of seeing and writing about every single film in the Collection!