Michael Jackson's This Is it!
Starring Michael Jackson.
Clearly critics who sat in on screenings of the Michael Jackson concert documentary This Is It! were expecting to see a shadow of the former vibrant entertainer and a film slapped together to exploit the public frenzy that followed his death. But Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times acknowledges that "this extraordinary documentary [is] nothing at all like what I was expecting so see. Here is not a sick and drugged man forcing himself through grueling rehearsals, but a spirit embodied by music. Michael Jackson was something else." The knowledge that Jackson was receiving regular doses of a plethora of drugs before his death, Ebert writes, "makes it hard to understand how he appears to be in superb physical condition. His choreography, built from such precise, abrupt and perfectly-timed movements, is exhausting, but he never shows a sign of tiring."
Joe Neumaier in the New York Daily News advises those who might feel reluctant to see the former music idol trying to make a comeback at age 50 just before his death, "Rest assured, the late King of Pop delivers. ... To see Jackson working hard in the hopes of sending shivers down a future audience's spine one last time gives closure to the festival of mourning that followed his death last June." And Ann Powers, the Los Angeles Times's pop music critic, concludes in her review of the film that if Jackson's London concert performances had actually materialized and he had performed as he does in the film, "he would have accomplished the comeback for which he was so hungry." The film is debuting simultaneously all over the world. In the London Daily Mail, critic Baz Bamigboye wrote that the film reveals "Jackson was a consummate artist, a perfectionist and that the This Is It Concerts would have been just about the best music show of the year." Not all critics are so generous. Lou Lumenick in the New York Post regards the movie as reprehensible -- "a ghoulish 'event' offered just in time for Halloween ... a shoddy piece of exploitation." And Kevin Maher in the London Times says that the filmmakers have achieved "middling" results from their efforts. "It's a strange and ultimately underwhelming way to say goodbye to a troubled, talented performer," he concludes.
RATING: PG for some suggestive choreography and scary images.
Ameila
Starring Hilary Swank, Richard Gere, Ewan McGregor, Christopher Eccleston, and Mia Wasikowska.
The famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart may have been regarded as a fascinating figure and overdue for a movie about her, but most critics have not found this movie very fascinating at all. As Lou Lumenick comments in the New York Post: "Considering this is the first-ever theatrical biopic of Earhart, she deserves better." Claudia Puig in USA Today says that the problem is, "We don't get a sense of what propelled her to such courageous heights. Familiar platitudes, headline montages and voice-over pontificating bog down the story in superficiality." It's worse than that, says Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal. As played by Hillary Swank, he writes, "we get a protofeminist with a frozen smile spouting free-as-a-bird slogans from a bird-brained script. The film struggles to stay aloft, and may soon vanish, like its namesake, without a trace." And Michael O'Sullivan in the Washington Post adds: "Look, nobody's asking for a miniseries here, but at times the movie feels more like a History Channel documentary -- respectful to the point of reverential -- than a rip-snorting yarn."
RATING: PG for some sensuality, language, thematic elements and smoking
Disney's A Christmas Carol
Starring Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Bob Hoskins, Robin Wright Penn, and Cary Elwes.
Disney's A Christmas Carol, a multi-sensory thrill ride re-envisioned by Robert Zemeckis, captures the fantastical essence of the classic Dickens tale in a groundbreaking 3-D motion picture event. Ebenezer Scrooge begins the Christmas holiday with his usual miserly contempt, barking at his faithful clerk and his cheery nephew. But when the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come take him on an eye-opening journey revealing truths Old Scrooge is reluctant to face, he must open his heart to undo years of ill will before it's too late.
RATING: PG for scary sequences and images.
Visit the Anacortes Cinemas Web site for showtimes.