Texas Chainsaw 3D
Here’s a question for all you novice Hollywood screenwriters. How do you link a storyline set in 1973 with a present day plot circa 2013? Oh, and remember, the characters involved can’t age the prerequisite 40 years and yet still must be directly “related” to those from four decades past. Don’t know? Well, why not […]
Cloud Atlas
We’re all connected. It’s either as a species, as part of a communal society, or as individuals living within universal maxims of love, fear, happiness, and struggle. Over time, over place, we still maintain a link, locked in to our shared humanity, no matter the situations or circumstances. Though it has much more to say […]
Love and Honor (Trailer)
Olympus Has Fallen (Trailer)
Spring Breakers (Trailer)
Lucky Bastard (Trailer)
Les Miserables (2012) (Trailer)
Les Miserables (2012)
Some stories are so bulletproof that even a tuneless Russell Crowe can’t deliver a mortal wound. There are also some so prone to overwrought pathos that even a fearsomely committed Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway, working every creative muscle in their bodies, can’t quite elevate to greatness. In Tom Hooper’s labor-of-love adaptation of the workhorse […]
Jack Reacher
A lunatic sniper fires off rounds from a parking garage, killing five presumably random people on the streets below. Identified by a fingerprint, the former soldier is arrested and promptly interrogated. In lieu of a confession, he scrawls on a piece of paper, “GET JACK REACHER.” Whoa! Who’s Jack Reacher? A former military criminal investigator […]
This Is 40 (Trailer)
This Is 40
In 2007’s Knocked Up — also known as the last funny movie Judd Apatow directed — Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann) were the fractious married couple who served as a warning to the commitment-phobic Ben Stone (Seth Rogen). With This Is 40, Apatow makes the wildly unnecessary move of spinning them off into […]
Hyde Park on Hudson
You may remember King George VI, if not from history than from the Oscar-anointed Best Picture of 2010, The King’s Speech. He’s the charming, low-key fellow (Colin Firth) who inherits the throne quite reluctantly after his brother abdicates for love, and must overcome his lifelong stammer in order to deliver an address as England declares […]
Mama
Is there room for overt sentimentality in a scary movie? That’s the main question one encounters after sitting through the Guillermo Del Toro-produced/Andres Muschietti-directed fright film Mama. While the aforementioned Mexican auteur has himself included fantasy and romanticized elements in his own movie macabre (The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth), it appears his penchant for turning […]
Silver Linings Playbook
Though hamfisted at times and ultimately predictable, Silver Linings Playbook still manages to bring some real brio to a genre long since sodden with platitudes and empty humor. And despite some serious errors in judgement, Silver Linings Playbook is one of those rare love stories with actual heart. After coming upon his wife in flagrante delicto having shower-fun-time with […]
The Guilt Trip
Whenever Oscar-winning chanteuse and defiant diva Barbra Streisand decides to grace us with her presence on the silver screen, it’s an event. From her initial musical work in the ’60s to the screwball comedies and romances of the ’70s, her career choices have always attempted to match her well known in-studio perfectionism. So how does […]
Broken City
The movies love sleaze in high places. From the posh offices of world leaders to the local political scandal, film enjoys tales of absolute power corrupting absolutely-and those who would bring such despots down. So it’s no surprise when an effort like Broken City comes around. It has all the components for a competent thriller. […]
The Details
A couple of years back, the brilliant Coen brothers unleashed A Serious Man on unsuspecting movie audiences. The masterpiece of faith and fate, the film featured a physics professor nebbish whose own growing Anti-Semitism is tempered by a cosmic design to make his life as unlivable as possible. Within the dark comedic core was a […]
Promised Land
Dealing with the hot button environmental issue of fracking (otherwise known as the hydraulic fracturing of the Earth’s bedrock in order to release trapped natural gas), and featuring a wealth of talent in front of and behind the scenes, Promised Land should be better. In fact, it should be great, especially when you consider the […]
Killing Them Softly
Andrew Dominik’s first film with Brad Pitt, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, was an unusually reflective movie about outlaws, a languorous and beautiful western by way of Terrence Malick. (Pitt would go on to star in the actual Malick film The Tree of Life, as if having graduated from an […]