Director Michael Patrick King has an uncanny ability to make any shooting location resemble a backlot in Burbank. That said, if you know what you're getting into, this live-action Chipmunk Adventure is watchable the way reruns of The King of Queens are watchable when you're stuck in a hotel room or on a long flight. Grade: B-
It's Jerry Bruckheimer's world—Mike Newell's just flailing in it. Grade: C-
Crichton reportedly pecked at this novel off and on for nearly thirty years before the completed manuscript was posthumously discovered on one of his computers. As such, it's a competently researched and adequately constructed set-piece delivery mechanism that favorably portends the film adaptation Steven Spielberg, also reportedly, already has dibs on. The nautical yarn begins to fray around the tenth or eleventh climax, and late-period (i.e., quadruply divorced) Crichton's penchant for punishing his token female characters rears its ugly head ("Emily, you are a bitch and a whore but you are not, I’ll wager, a murderer," one character magnanimously informs his adulterous wife—incidentally one of the few women in the novel who isn't an actual prostitute); but compared to the howlingly mean-spirited and terrible Prey and Next, Pirate Latitudes isn't such a bad swan song. Suggested pairing: tepid Virgin America absinthe.
Where Nicole Holofcener's previous ensemble piece Friends With Money was sunny, humane and keenly observed, Please Give is dreary, humane and mostly observed from Catherine Keener's point of view. The lower light levels and narrower focus exact a toll. Grade: B
Artist: Little Boots. Album: Illuminations.
Artist: Marc Streitenfeld. Album: Robin Hood (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack).
Artist: CocoRosie. Album: Grey Oceans.
Artist: The National. Album: High Violet.
Messy, meandering pageantry from Ridley Scott, who ought to know better. Grade: B-
Artist: A Fine Frenzy. Album: Bomb in a Birdcage.
Artist: The Flying Tourbillon Orchestra. Album: Escapements.
Colorful, eventful, playful—Tony Stark is the new old James Bond. Too bad neither Mickey Rourke nor Sam Rockwell is Blofeld. In this case more is a little bit less. Grade: B
The Phenomenal Handclap Band (feat. Morgan Phalen). Album: The Phenomenal Handclap Band.
Artist: Neon Trees. Album: Habits.
Artist: Grizzly Bear. Album: Veckatimest.
Artist: Scanners. Album: Submarine.