Movie reviews: The Men Who Stare At Goats, The Fourth Kind, A Christmas Carol, and An Education
We check out what's playing down at the cineplex—and it's not pretty
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Ever since commercials for The Men Who Stare At Goats started airing regularly on TV, we’ve been pretty excited. George Clooney! Jeff Bridges in Lebowski mode! Kevin Spacey in a role that hasn’t been designed to inspire us! Unfortunately, we’re a little less pumped after reading Noel Murray’s ho-hum review. “Throughout the movie, director Grant Heslov and screenwriter Peter Straughan (working from a non-fiction book by Jon Ronson) offer about two dozen variations on the notion of an idealistic know-it-all so committed to his shtick that he fails to see what’s right in front of him,” Murray writes in his B- recap. “The problem with The Men Who Stare At Goats is that this joke wears pretty thin after a while.”
A.V. Club movie critics are a surly lot this week. Scott Tobias rips the new docu-horror film The Fourth Kind in his C- review, saying it “is terminally awkward in the way it meshes fake real footage with faker fake footage. It isn’t required to be convincing as fact, but it doesn’t convince as fiction, either.” The kiddie holiday movie A Christmas Carol is another dud, according to Keith Phipps, who writes that “the holiday spirit feels real, but the film does not.”
The best film opening in Milwaukee this weekend is easily An Education, which “captures with tenderness and wit the exquisite ache of growing up,” Nathan Rabin writes in his A- review. Plus, there are no dead goats, so there you go.
