Blogcritics.org

Alan Dale Blogcritics.org Jan 1, 2009 [The moviemakers'] straightforwardness about ... sexual relationships is beyond refreshing[,] ... as if sugarcoating were chemically impossible. Go to Full Review Confusions of an Unmarried Couple (2009) 80% - -

Alan Dale Blogcritics.org May 28, 2007 Marber looks at farcical giddiness with a hard-won sobriety.... Closer is a voguish farce that, rather than making you wish you were like the characters, makes you wish that you hadn't been. Go to Full Review Closer (2004) 67% 81%

Alan Dale Blogcritics.org Apr 17, 2007 The characters' motives are base enough, and there's an odd combination of petty incidents having walloping consequences, but the ironies are as delicately layered and "delicious" as they could possibly be without a hint of preciosity. Go to Full Review Notes on a Scandal (2006) 87% 83%

Alan Dale Blogcritics.org Mar 13, 2007 The irony is subtle ... but irresistible for anyone interested in narrative paradox. L'Amour fou is one of the few movies, and one of the best, to deal directly with a literary subject. Go to Full Review L'Amour Fou (1969) 100% 92%

Alan Dale Blogcritics.org Feb 15, 2007 I could have happily sat through the first half a second time, though I was barely able to sit through the second half once. Go to Full Review Dreamgirls (2006) 79% 67%

Alan Dale Blogcritics.org Jan 5, 2007 It's theatrical genius: Cohen has devised a split-level act in which being hooked off the stage by his in-the-movie audience makes for success with his at-the-movie audience. Go to Full Review Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) 90% 79%

Alan Dale Blogcritics.org Jan 5, 2007 [R]eplicate[s] in a raunchy cartoon how the chaos of our experience correlates more than we may care to admit to the chaos of our personalities. Go to Full Review Strangers With Candy (2005) 51% 55%

Alan Dale Blogcritics.org Dec 31, 2006 To give the narrative depth, bite, or oomph, as naturalism, irony, or romance, or some combination ... Morgan would have to have invented more (as Shakespeare and Schiller did with their historical royalty).... Go to Full Review The Queen (2006) 97% 76%

Alan Dale Blogcritics.org Dec 31, 2006 [J]ust the kind of numbskull movie that critics call 'smart'. Go to Full Review Stranger Than Fiction (2006) 73% 85%

Alan Dale Blogcritics.org Dec 18, 2006 [T]he movie's emphasis on Nicholas's misadventures, as if the audience couldn't get into the story of Uganda without an educated, white, middle-class European as a protagonist, is a huge let-down in its own terms. Go to Full Review The Last King of Scotland (2006) 87% 89%

Alan Dale Blogcritics.org Dec 3, 2006 There's not a fully realized personality in 132 minutes. Though it's based on a non-fiction book, Flags of Our Fathers is too thinly imagined for naturalism, and when Eastwood squeezes the material for greater significance, it crumbles. Go to Full Review Flags of Our Fathers (2006) 76% 69%

Alan Dale Blogcritics.org Dec 3, 2006 [Covering] the same period of the author's life as Bennett Miller's Capote..., Infamous is not only the more entertaining movie, it's the more sophisticated, and the more emotional, as well. Go to Full Review Infamous (2006) 75% 69%

Alan Dale Blogcritics.org Nov 1, 2006 The movie gains life entirely from the interplay among the actors, and both of the young stars are wonderful. Go to Full Review The Departed (2006) 91% 94%

Alan Dale Blogcritics.org Nov 1, 2006 Towne has a perhaps unique ability to make this ill-fated movie romance classically seductive while doing full justice to its authentic subject. [His] canniness as a writer and casual sophistication do wonders for the actors. Go to Full Review Ask the Dust (2006) 36% 41%

Alan Dale Blogcritics.org Nov 1, 2006 [Shortbus] will give adults who aren't put off by zoo-naked sex more to talk about, even in disparagement, than anything showing at the Cineplex. Go to Full Review Shortbus (2006) 69% 77%

Alan Dale Blogcritics.org Sep 26, 2006 As Miles, Clooney doesn't make any direct emotional appeal to the audience and yet his high style is so smashingly effective that Miles stands open to us: macher, lover, patsy. Go to Full Review Intolerable Cruelty (2003) 76% 48%

Alan Dale Blogcritics.org Sep 26, 2006 [Marge is] a good cop because everything abnormal stands out like a stain against her white-on-white sanity.... [H]er incomprehension [of criminality] is not only her strength as a detective, it justifies the deadpan style of the movie. Go to Full Review Fargo (1996) 95% 92%

Alan Dale Blogcritics.org Sep 26, 2006 [A]s in soap opera, drama is synonymous with the torments of love. Hayek is a brave, tireless performer, ... but given the script she can only play Kahlo the "beguiling personality" she liked to think of herself as ... rather than Kahlo the artist. Go to Full Review Frida (2002) 77% 85%

Alan Dale Blogcritics.org Sep 26, 2006 [Y]ou laugh with a growing sense of dread because it makes you feel what it's like to realize it's too late to help yourself. Go to Full Review About Schmidt (2002) 86% 74%

Alan Dale Blogcritics.org Sep 15, 2006 Perhaps the only way to enjoy it is to accept that saying something offensive is better than saying nothing at all. The Evelyn Waugh who wrote The Loved One might have agreed with that, at any rate. Go to Full Review The Loved One (1965) 47% 76%