Metro Times Detroit

Speed Racer

The Wachowski brothers certainly put the pedal to the metal in Speed Racer, but what's the use of all that power if you don't have good handling? This souped-up version of the anime television show is a dizzying swirl of eye-popping color, driven by the need for speed and an anarchic desire to jump the track. A deep affection for Tatsuo Yoshida's original 1967-8 series is apparent in The Matrix-makers' rigorous attention to detail, yet that hasn't stopped them from reconfiguring the Mach 5 into this year's model. Speed Racer is an awkward retrofit: A vintage chassis with a turbo-charged engine, it wants to hold the road, but continually veers off-course. [more]

Son of Rambow

As a self-confessed movie geek who squandered far too much of his childhood in the shelter of a darkened movie theater, I'm predisposed to identify with a story about boyish film obsession. I only wish that this movie itself were more worthy of obsessing over. Son of Rambow is a fitfully charming and engaging little romp, but it's not likely to inspire anyone to the frenzied heights of passion displayed by the movie's kid heroes. The stars are a mismatched outcast duo, united by imagination and a dearth of good male role models. [more]

Redbelt

Putting his celebrated theater credentials aside, David Mamet essentially has two Hollywood personas: Mamet the screenwriter and Mamet the filmmaker. And the gulf in quality between the two can be pretty dramatic. Mamet the screenwriter likes to deconstruct well-trodden film genres into his own self-conscious brand of stylized dialogue and narrative sleight-of-hand. No matter what kind of movie he's paying homage to, it's inevitable that an elaborate con and the unwritten code of manly behavior are at the heart of his story. Though the seams always threaten to pop, his tales have an internal and intimate logic that keeps them from falling apart. Movies like Things Change, House Of Games and State And Main have so much pluck, style and ingenuity that you're willing to forgive their convolutions and contrivances. [more]

Then She Found Me

Does anyone really love Bette Midler? I mean, other than gay men and my Aunt Elaine? In Helen Hunt's directing debut — an adaptation of Elinor Lipman's very '90s novel — Midler provides all the brassy, motor-mouth mugging you'd expect from an actress who perpetually seems on the verge ofbreaking into song. On the surface, she seems like a terrible choice for an intimate art-house comic drama. [more]

What Happens in Vegas

What Happens in Vegas is the cinematic equivalent of a Twinkie: cheap, artificial, bad for you, yet eager to please and weirdly satisfying. This should not be read as an outright endorsement of industrially extruded noxious yellow snack foods, or of lazy, brain-killing formulaic date movies, simply an acknowledgement that both products serve a certain niche, and while undeniably awful, under the right circumstances they can be guiltily enjoyable. [more]