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Review: Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son
Reviews
10,000 B.C.
Far out "history"
By
BRETT MICHEL
|
March 12, 2008
10,000 B.C.
" alt="photo of '10,000 B.C.'">
1.5
Stars
MUD-SMEARED MAN: Steven Strait as Anglo hero D'leh.
Roland Emmerich has set aside his usual end-of-days scenario (
Independence
Day, The Day After Tomorrow
) and gone back to the beginning. A product of public schooling, my knowledge of history can be a bit sketchy, so I’ll take Emmerich as his word. The pyramids were built 7500 years earlier than I seem to recall, and why not? Woolly mammoths make cheap labor. What were they doing in Egypt? Well, it must have been easy to get around, since there was only one continent 12,008 years ago. A really small continent, since the Anglo hero, D’leh (Steven Strait), is able to traverse its (flat?) surface in a matter of days without so much as needing a shave. Using his Androclean skills with a sabertooth tiger to amass an African army, he saves Evolet (Camilla Belle), his blue-eyed girlfriend, from Evil Arabs with electronically enhanced voices. Omar Sharif’s soothing narration keeps you from confusing this with
Apocalypto
and its outrageous “history.”
109 minutes | Boston Common + Fenway + Fresh Pond + Chestnut Hill + suburbs
Related
:
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,
Primary concerns
,
The Covenant
,
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Review: 2012
Doomsday is good therapy. What does it matter that billions die if that brings a family together in one big hug?
Primary concerns
The last thing people are looking for when they go to the movies is a reminder of the political crapola they are trying to escape.
The Covenant
I bet you didn’t know this (it’s a well kept secret, hence the title), but at a prestigious prep school on the North Shore (the film was shot in Quebec), scions of Salem warlocks use their sorcery to expose babes’ bottoms, repair cars, get into Harvard, and perpetrate even more devious deeds. Watch the trailer for The Covenant (QuickTime)
October lite
We expected the vampires, the werewolves, the zombies, and the homicidal maniacs. Same thing with the android doubles, the alien abductors, the sexually abused pregnant teenager, the Apocalypse, and the post-Apocalypse. But kids' movies?
New to DVD for the week of December 27, 2005
New DVD releases for the week of December 27, 2005
Shoulda-been
Here’s another knock against the bonehead Foreign Language Oscar selections for 2007.
Off with their heads
The signs are getting bleak for the man in the White House and the party in power.
Epochalypse soon
The end times do indeed commence on December 21, 2012. On that date, this fragile blue orb of ours will suddenly cease to be a very fun place to live.
The plots thicken
Eight years after the destruction of the World Trade Center — the result of one of the most devastatingly successful conspiracies in history — Americans still take comfort in paranoia.
Company man
In at least one of its toss-away scenes, Joshua Seftel’s War, Inc. rises to the level of brutal bad taste that distinguishes master satirists from Jonathan Swift to Stanley Kubrick.
The Quiet
Deaf and mute since the age of seven, teenage foster kid Dot is more than just the loner/loser of her upscale Connecticut high school; she’s a sounding board for all who imagine that she can’t hear their secrets. Watch the trailer for The Quiet (QuickTime)
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[
02/17
]
Festival Ballet Providence presents UP CLOSE ON HOPE
@ Black Box Theater
[
02/17
]
"Dana Levin: A Classical Realist In the 21st Century," an exhibit of paintings
@ Bert Gallery
[
02/17
]
Mary Poppins
@ Providence Performing Arts Center
ARTICLES BY BRETT MICHEL
REVIEW: THIS MEANS WAR
| February 16, 2012
What promises to be a modern Jules and Jim (until you realize it's directed by a 43-year-old who calls himself "McG") quickly devolves into Spy vs. Spy territory, only with incompetently staged and edited action and little of that ol' Mad magazine zing.
REVIEW: THE VIRAL FACTOR
| January 17, 2012
Made for a modest budget of $17 million — and feeling like it (who needs convincing explosions in an action movie?), Dante Lam's latest still gets the job done from a run-and-gun standpoint.
REVIEW: EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE
| January 17, 2012
Too soon? For Stephen Daldry's 9/11 drama, the right time is "never."
REVIEW: THE DIVIDE
| January 10, 2012
Many a teleplay for The Twilight Zone threatened atomic Armageddon, and though Frontier(s) director Xavier Gens nukes New York in the opening shots of his latest thriller, he finds more inspiration in the horrors of human nature as seen in the old TV show's episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street."
REVIEW: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL
| December 20, 2011
Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) returns to the screen in dramatic fashion as new teammate Jane (Paula Patton) and the returning Benji (Simon Pegg) break him out of a Russian prison.
See all articles by:
BRETT MICHEL
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