Review

STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS

A Dark Night Rises: Star Trek Into Darkness mixes inside jokes, politics, story and acting into one great ride.

There’s a thing that makes me very sad about Star Trek Into Darkness. It’s not the perfect geek storm of an opening gambit that evokes not only the old-school boldly-going adventures of the crew of ...

THE GREAT GATSBY

Literary Criticism: Baz Luhrmann’s problem is more than not showing proper respect for The Great Gatsby.

What if Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby didn’t have to carry the burden of The Great Gatsby? That’s not just some Zen koan-like riddle intended to inspire deep meditation; it’s a question about the way ...

IRON MAN

Man of Action:Iron Man 3 nothing to Marvel at, but delivers good acting, reasonable fun.

Iron Man 3 opens with Tony Stark speaking of demons from his past coming back to haunt him. Let’s draw that out a bit to put the film in context: What we’ve seen in the ...

MUD

Ignore the plot holes, Matthew McConaughey charms as fugitive in coming-of-age tale.

Benefiting from a cast that includes Matthew McConaughey, Sam Shepherd and Michael Shannon, Mud is an engaging coming-of-age tale whose gaping plot holes barely matter. Writer-director Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter) cobbles together the story of ...

THE COMPANY YOU KEEP

Robert Redford plays loose with his age, but directs a smart film about radicals still on the lam in The Company You Keep.

Robert Redford’s solid new movie The Company You Keep looks intelligently at the realities faced by aging radicals, members of a fictional version of the Weather Underground, an organization that used violence as a means ...

OBLIVION

Earth is wrecked, aliens abound and Tom Cruise saves the day in fun trek through space.

Just once it’d be nice to see a movie set in a future in which things are peaceful. People are not corrupt and divisive (as in The Hunger Games), technology doesn’t determine law and order ...

ROOM 237

Documentary tries to ferret out hidden meaning in even mundane items in Kubrick’s The Shining. 

Once again it all comes down to Kubrick. Termitic film nerds could chow down for years on the wood chips in Room 237, subtitled: “Being an inquiry into The Shining in nine parts.” The things ...

Selling Democracy

NO chronicles the rule of Augusto Pinochet, and how opponents marketed themselves like candy.

NO, an entertaining Chilean film directed by Pablo Larrain and nominated for best foreign film at this year’s Oscars, dramatizes the 1988 campaign to end Augusto Pinochet’s 15 years of dictatorship. Pinochet’s own constitution called ...

THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES

Alpha males clash and clash again in Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pines.

Writer-director Derek Cianfrance has a flair for the sublimely saccharine. In his 2010 film Blue Valentine, Ryan Gosling plays an overzealous lover who breaks out a ukulele and tells his girl he’s going to reveal ...

Evil Dead

Snore Gore Bore: Unnecessarily remake of Evil Dead lacks the charm, interest and Bruce Campbell of the original.

It’s “the most terrifying film you will ever experience,” Evil Dead would have us believe. Bah. Is it gory? Sure. This is one of the most disgusting movies I’ve ever seen, grading strictly on a ...

The Gatekeepers

Internal Conflict: The Gatekeepers shines a bright light on Israel’s other intelligence agency.

The Gatekeepers opens in sobering fashion. A few years ago, the adjective might have been “chilling” or “shocking,” but a culture of drone strikes and WikiLeaks videos has acclimated us to the sight of eye-in-the-sky ...

G.I. Joe Retaliation

Soldier of Fortune: Lame G.I. Joe sequel packs too many explosions into too small a story.

Here’s the key to mindless action movies: They need to have just enough story to keep things moving. Too little story, or too many plot holes, and the movie fails regardless of how good the ...

On The Road

Jack’s Back: The Beat Generation lives on in sold interpretation of classic On the Road.

Enough time has passed since Jack Kerouac shocked American literary culture with his free-verse writings that few audiences will fault the film version of On the Road for its miscasting of Sam Riley (as Kerouac’s ...

Olympus Has Fallen

Channeling Die Hard Olympus Has Fallen shows what that other action franchise is missing.

Sure, I may be a film critic – but I’m also an American. I’ve got my pride in our nation’s accomplishments, and I don’t like seeing its institutions in peril. Which is why Olympus Has ...

War Witch

Life During Wartime: War Witch weaves engrossing, grotesque tale of child soldiers in Africa.

There’s little joy in War Witch. Even a scene with big, booming laughter – a startling moment in an often wretched and upsetting film – is undercut by the tension of a loaded AK-47. And ...

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

Magically Ridiculous The Incredible Burt Wonderstone brings big laughs in tales of magicians past their prime.

God help me, I’m not even sure I can remember why, only a few days after the fact, I laughed so damn hard at The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. Which is a terrible position for me ...

Lore

Children of War: Lore tells the tale of a fallen Nazi’s children, and their secret journey to find a home.

If she keeps making films like the German-language Lore, director Cate Shortland (Somersault, starring Abbie Cornish), should be remembered quite well in the emotional-portrait filmmaking world. In her sophomore effort, Shortland brings the story to ...

Oz the Great and Powerful

Which Witch?: Oz redux puts beautiful actors in beyond-bland story.

What I keep hearing in my head is: Escape from Oz. I had no trouble keeping the title straight before I saw the film. But apparently the mere act of watching – and it was ...

Jack the Giant Slayer

Hills of Beans: Slick CGI can’t save Jack the Giant Slayer from bland characters, dull storytelling.

It’s fun to play along with Jack the Giant Slayer for a while, as it does have its charms as a slick Hollywood reinterpretation of the “Jack and the Beanstalk” fairy tale. Then we get ...

Happy People: A Year in the Taiga

Siberian Splendor: Famed documentarian examines the case for happiness in Happy People: A Year in the Taiga.

Some directors are able to breeze between feature films and documentaries, though, generally, each filmmaker is stronger in one medium than the other. Not so with the legendary Werner Herzog, who’s been churning out films ...

West of Memphis

Bodies by the River: West of Memphis examines one of the greatest miscarriages of justice of our times.

Forget The Dark Knight. Move over, Katniss Everdeen. The most intense, nail-bitingly suspenseful thriller franchise “from the dark side” these days is not the product of a screenwriter’s imagination. It’s a true crime story from ...

Bless Me, Ultima

Ultima Fighting: Adaptation of best-selling Chicano novel Bless Me, Ultima appeals with honesty, morality.

The independent film Bless Me, Ultima is based on the most widely read and best-selling novel of the Chicano literary canon, according to the film’s press kit. Written by Rudolfo Anaya and published in 1972, ...

Beautiful Creatures

Creatures Featured: Supernatural angst meets teen romance in strangely effective Beautiful Creatures.

Okay, sure: On the surface Beautiful Creatures is Twilight with witches instead of vampires and gender roles reversed. But that doesn’t mean it’s automatically as bad as many of the putrid Twilight movies were. Quite ...

A Good Day to Die Hard

Dying Harder: See this one because you’re compelled by nostalgia, not because it’s a great film.

Remember John McClane? New York cop, blue collar kind of guy, not afraid to do his best in an emergency situation on unfamiliar turf? Sure you do. We loved him in Die Hard, a big ...

Side Effects

Out of Its Mind: Side Effects uses an ensemble cast to debate pharmaceutical ethics.

Sometimes life doesn’t work out the way it’s supposed to. In Side Effects, a would-be taut psychological thriller from director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic), Emily (Rooney Mara), a seemingly nice girl with a history of depression, ...

Amour

The Beautiful End: Oscar-contender Amour demonstrates the power of heartbreak in long-term love.

We’re all going to die, and some of us will be lucky enough to grow old gracefully. But what happens when the gracefulness wears off? That question is at the center of the deeply beating ...

Stand Up Guys

Brothers in Arms: Stand Up Guys puts aging hitmen together in a mob bromance.

Stand Up Guys is a respectable compact crime drama comedy about camaraderie among a passing generation of retired wiseguys. There’s still some honor among thieves. Christopher Walken, Al Pacino, and Alan Arkin play the film’s ...

Warm Bodies

Zombie Meets Girl: Clever premise and one-liners reanimate this otherwise standard zom-rom-com.

What if zombies were self-aware? That simple premise launches the zombie comedy Warm Bodies, as we meet R, a zombie who lives at the airport with a bunch of other zombies, walking around aimlessly and ...

Quartet

Senior Groove: Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut Quartet sings the tale of elderly musicians at a retirement home.

What’s great about Quartet? It demonstrates a genuine love for the arts, and is quick to point out the importance the arts can have throughout a person’s life. To that end, it’s inspiring to see ...

Rust and Bone

Body and Soul: Jacques Audiard tells another beautiful story about pain in Rust and Bone.

After waking to find both of his legs had been amputated, Ronald Reagan screamed, “Where’s the rest of me!” It was the centerpiece of the 1942 film King’s Row. A couple of decades later, Reagan ...

Mama

Del Toro-backed horror flick Mama offers infantile frights.

Guillermo del Toro – the director of such minor masterpieces as The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth – weakens his sphere of influence by producing a sorely underdeveloped horror movie that manufactures scares from the ...

Zero Dark Thirty

Uncomfortable Reality: Zero Dark Thirty has the potential to be great, but rips off the Bin Laden bandage too soon.

Too soon? Too soon for a kickass political action movie about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden? It’s been less than two years since a black-ops team of elite American soldiers executed the purported mastermind ...

Gangster Squad

Darkly Delicious: Gangster Squad embraces noir of ’40s L.A. cops and cons with reckless, fun abandon.

If L.A. Confidential were a comic book, this is the movie spun outta that: blustery postwar mythologizing about the violent birth of the modern metropolis, all pulpy-bright even when it’s night, bursting with violence that ...

The Tops

2012 yielded a bumper crop of stellar flicks.

What a great year for movies. This list of the Top Ten movies of 2012 could easily have 20 entries and there’d still be room to spare. Yes, we had our disappointments – Prometheus and ...

Hyde Park on the Hudson

Franklin and the King: Meandering story, inaccurate portrayals hamper exploration of FDR in Hyde Park on the Hudson

There’s a scene in Hyde Park on the Hudson in which a pool of reporters are waiting for President Franklin D. Roosevelt to come out of his mansion and get into his car. They all ...

Middle-Age Malaise

This is 40 melds emotionally stunted humor and  dull drama in the married-with-kids life.

Sometime after the hilarious Knocked Up (2007), writer/director Judd Apatow inexplicably decided to become a serious filmmaker. It was as if, similar to Seth Rogen’s character in that film, Apatow felt he needed to stop ...

Hunting Freedom

Quentin Tarantino’s slavery revenge flick Django Unchained  marks his best work since Pulp Fiction.

Quentin Tarantino is at his best when he gets out of his own way. Specifically, his tendency to overwrite dialogue scenes—and then not cut them down when editing—is often his worst quality. But when he’s ...

Jack Reacher

Reacher Feature: Tom Cruise swings hard at this action-detective flick, but it’s better suited for basic cable.

The trailer makes Tom Cruise’s latest foray into action look like Jason Bourne channeling Martin Riggs, but it’s more like a midseason episode of a television detective show. Sure, the finale is a standard shootout ...

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Slogging to Erebor: Peter Jackson plays it out with unexpectedly long journey in latest installment of The Hobbit.

Peter Jackson sure has nerve. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, a prequel to Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, begins with dwarves sitting around a dinner table saying, “Hey, we need to get to Erebor ...

Hitchcock

Hitch in the Story: Hitchcock portrays famed director as more conflicted and less perverse than history reveals.

Alfred Hitchcock, the undisputed master of movie suspense, is given fairly fanciful treatment in this movie, which is theoretically based on Stephen Rebello’s book, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho. Yet, as written by ...

Playing for Keeps

Losing Game: No one wins in Playing For Keeps.

Of all the great mysteries of Hollywood, Gerard Butler’s appeal is chief among them. He’s confident, has an accent, can sing and had nice painted-on abs in 300, granted, but none of that forgives the ...

Anna Karenina

Anna in Absentia: Knightley dull in an otherwise visually stunning remake of classic Anna Karenina

You might expect the latest adaptation of the great Russian novel, Anna Karenina, to be a big-screen extravaganza, and it is, but not the kind you’re thinking of. This highly stylized and entertaining version of ...

Smashed

Sober Fight: A couple faces the battle to stop drinking, and stay married, in Smashed.

No matter how much we enjoy the weekend, Monday morning comes to us all. If Kate Hannah (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) wakes up with a killer hangover from a weekend of drinking, it’s nothing she’s not ...

Tiger, Tiger

Director Ang Lee proves he’s a master of image and imagination in remarkable Life of Pi.

There is no such thing as a perfect memory. We remember things the way we choose to remember them – honestly, with exaggeration, with modesty, etc. This is why storytelling is a fine art – ...

Red Dawn

New Dawn: Updated version of the 1984 classic bursts with ramped-up action

Going into the new Red Dawn, I wondered why there was a need to remake the ’80s classic about a group of teens who hide out in the woods, when the United States is overrun ...

String Theory

Christopher Walken, Catherine Keener discuss their roles as jealous musicians in A Late Quartet.

Although filmmaker Yaron Zilberman’s critically acclaimed drama A Late Quartet revolves around the exclusive highbrow world of classical music in Manhattan, Christopher Walken makes a pretty good argument as to why its appeal is more ...

Lincoln

Honest Abe Portrayal: A spot-on performance surrounded by a strong cast brings Spielberg’s historical drama Lincoln to life.

There is no question that from this point forward, Daniel Day-Lewis’ Abraham Lincoln will be considered the definitive portrayal by which all others will be measured. Day-Lewis is known for immersing himself in his characters, ...

The Sessions

Better Than Sex: Director Ben Lewin employs a trio of talent to lift The Sessions above its plot potential.

A man in his thirties who has spent his adult life flat on his back in an iron lung and has never had a sexual experience decides to attempt intercourse with a paid therapist. But ...

Skyfall

Look Out Below: Delicious villainy, Daniel Craig sexuality make for a thrilling Bond adventure in Skyfall.

Ah, finally we understand the masterplan that has been quietly ticking over since Casino Royale. That movie was not, in fact, the 007 reboot – it merely set the stage for the reboot. It introduced ...

Wreck-It Ralph

Gaming for Glory: No need for Mr. Fix-It – this animated film fuses gamer cool with kid-friendly story.

That beautiful Toy Story premise of what your favorite toys do when you’re not watching has been recoded for the arcade. In Wreck-It Ralph, we see behind the screen after the gamers go home. It’s ...

Flight

Up in the Air: Denzel Washington gives the finest performance of his career as an addict turned reluctant hero in Flight. 

In Flight, a pilot rescues 96 people from certain death as he guides an airborne plane to the ground after it malfunctions. He’s a hero, right? What if he was drunk, had smoked marijuana and ...

Fun Size

Run from Fun: Fun Size takes the tweenage comedy genre to icky places.

Fun Size is amoral, unfunny and a chore to sit through. Worse, it takes some situations with children so nonchalantly that it becomes uncomfortable to watch. If ever a movie sends the wrong message to ...

Cloud Atlas

High in the Sky: Time flies in more ways than one in soaring, enthralling Cloud Atlas

It opens in the same way that, most likely, the very first story told for entertainment began, 100,000 years ago: with an elderly person wizened by wisdom speaking to an audience gathered ’round a campfire. ...

Cross to Bear

Rob Cohen’s Alex Cross, based on the famed James Patterson character, should die a quick and painless death.

Matthew Fox plays a cold-hearted, steely-eyed psychopath in Alex Cross, and darn if it’s not one of the best villain performances of the year. His character, Picasso, loves to inflict pain, and no worries if ...

The Paperboy

Missed Delivery: The Paperboy plays at hardcore, to demoralizing results.

Openly anti-Semitic homophobic, misogynist and racist, there’s something to offend nearly everyone in this wrongheaded ’60s era sexploitation misadventure. Pete Dexter’s pulp novel Paris Trout – about some of the dumbest fictional characters ever imagined ...

Seven Psychopaths

Dog Daze: Mad dash for a dognapped Shih Tzu has Seven Psychopaths stumbling over convoluted plot.

Of the numerous ways people are killed in Seven Psychopaths, it’s important to remember that much of it happens because of a dog. An exceptionally cute Shih Tzu that has its own Facebook page, to ...

Frankenweenie

Tale of the Pup: In Frankenweenie, Tim Burton resurrects a child’s pet – and his own ethos – with his most Burtonesque film in years.

Tim Burton, Hollywood’s goth nerd, returns to his roots, literally and figuratively, with Frankenweenie, and thank the ghost of Mary Shelley for it. Burton’s most recent films – Dark Shadows; Alice in Wonderland – have ...

Chicken With Plums

Strung Along: Chicken With Plums conjures painful sweetness in the life and death of an Iranian violinist.

For more than an hour, Chicken With Plums looks like it’s going to be a case study in terminal levels of preciousness. Then, improbably, directors Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud bring it back from the ...

Looper

Infinite Loop: Time-traveling bad guys face clunky story and direction in Looper.

As time-travel suspense thrillers go, Looper is only a pinch better than mediocre. The make-up that Joseph Gordon-Levitt wears to make him look like a young Bruce Willis is such a distraction that it alienates ...

Pitch Perfect

Life’s a Pitch: An adult version of Glee, Pitch Perfect stays slyly, wryly in tune.

Take Glee, lose the preaching, add college naughtiness, and you have Pitch Perfect, a toe-tappin’ good time that keeps the energy and laughs consistently high throughout. Set in the surprisingly cutthroat world of collegiate a ...

The Master

I Will Follow: One powerful relationship – not an assault on Scientology – fuels the extraordinary The Master.

Is Paul Thomas Anderson’s hauntingly intimate epic The Master about Scientology? That’s been the focus of attention for many with only peripheral interest in the film itself, hoping perhaps for some kind of searing roman-a-clef ...

Trouble With the Curve

Bunt Single: Trouble With the Curve makes a decent pitch, but nothing all-world.

This ode to old-school baseball scouting arrives almost as though in response to last year’s Moneyball. Trouble With the Curve, this autumn’s boys-of-summer movie, is a testament to the traditional methods of analyzing a player’s ...

Sleepwalk With Me

Eyes Wide Open: Comic’s real-life tale of danger in the night comes to life in Sleepwalk With Me.

One of the stories that stands out in the vast This American Life canon is comedian Mike Birbiglia’s account of a dangerous sleepwalking incident at a La Quinta Inn, which is featured on the episode ...

Arbitrage

Hedging the Bet: Richard Gere embraces a handful of deadly sins as a soulless Wall Streeter in Arbitrage.

Some not-so-fancy narrative mechanics set Richard Gere up as a one-percenter antihero in a movie that deplorably attempts to mitigate the evil that wealthy corruption loves to wield at every level of social injustice. With ...

The Words

Borrowed Words: There’s nothing writerly in this bland psychological thriller about writers stealing from other writers.

For a film about writers, The Words isn’t particularly well written. Scripted and directed by Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal, the movie features a familiar plot: A struggling novelist stumbles on an unpublished manuscript and ...

The Cold Light of Day

Turn Off This Light: Henry Cavill’s pretty face isn’t enough to save lackluster The Cold Light of Day.

The Cold Light of Day! Brought to you by the Madrid Film Tax Credit Production Office and the Society for the Promotion of Henry Cavill as the Next Big Thing! What’s that? You’ve never heard ...

Lawless

In High Spirits: Prohibition-era Lawless soars with powerful storytelling, masterful acting.

If this wasn’t based on a true story, you’d scoff. Forrest Bondurant, Depression-era entrepreneur, is legendary in rural Virginia, rumored to be invincible because he survived a Great War military attack that killed all his ...

Celeste & Jesse Forever

Hot Pain: Best friends divorce in a Celeste & Jesse Forever story that finds charm wrapped in deep discomfort.

When women have meltdowns in the movies, the meltdowns rarely overstay their welcome. A box of tissues dispatched, a Ben & Jerry’s gorge, maybe a bottle of wine (but never more than one). “Keep it ...

Hit & Run

Spinning Wheels: Dax Shepard’s charm highlights an otherwise lackluster chase flick in Hit & Run.

Dax Shepard’s sophomore directorial feature – following the awkwardly staged show-biz parody Brother’s Justice – is a bizarre mélange of earnest and romantic road movie, high-octane chase picture reminiscent of everything the mustachioed version of ...

The Imposter

Scary Switcheroo: The Imposter chronicles a real-life child disappearance, and the con-man who took the boy’s place.

Truth is stranger than fiction, and sometimes vice versa. But when the elements of a mystery become so impossibly obscured by the sheer emotional drama of a crime – a crime that actually might not ...

The Expendables 2

The Art of Bore: The worst thing about The Expendables 2 is the chance for The Expendables 3

If you could drop a bomb on The Expendables 2, that would be like totally awesome, man! Er, sure, but I was thinking you could wipe out ’80s action heroes, and that would be a ...

Killer Joe

A Killer Epic: Famed director William Friedkin riffs on film, philosophy and life as his Killer Joe opens at the Osio.

“Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing can be made,” says director William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection), channeling the philosopher Immanuel Kant. Friedkin was in San Francisco recently for a ...

The Campaign

What’s Right?: The Campaign turns the political process red with laughter.

Here’s a new twist. Picture a Republican politician with humanitarian ethics. Now imagine said unicorn in the corporeal being of Zach Galifianakis, making the most of every effeminate gesture he can muster as small town ...

The Bourne Legacy

Generation Kill 2.0: Dual assassins live parallel lives as a new Bourne hero emerges.

Is it worth $10? Yes. The Bourne Legacy takes the franchise in a smart and practical new direction, but due to a dragging, convoluted story it’s also not as good as its predecessors. For clarity: ...

The Queen Of Versailles

Damned Dream: The Queen of Versailles shows the diminishing American Dream through one billionaire family.

Director Lauren Greenfield struck documentary gold when she started filming the Siegel family in 2007. At that time, the billionaire couple was constructing their dream home, a 90,000-square-foot house with 30 bathrooms and 10 kitchens ...

Total Recall

Memory Maker: Revamp of Schwarzenegger hit Total Recall lags in the beginning, delivers in the end.>Memory Maker: Revamp of Schwarzenegger hit Total Recall lags in the beginning, de

It’s an ingenious premise: Life is boring and you’re unfulfilled. How cool would it be to have new memories implanted in your brain, and you can’t tell that they’re fake? What Total Recall does with ...

Step Up Revolution

Mob Action: Awesome dance sequences meet snoozer story in rote Step Up Revolution.

After four cracks at it, the Step Up franchise remains incapable of a telling a story that doesn’t make you angry at its stupidity. Apparently it’s too much to ask professional filmmakers to remember that ...

The Intouchables

Buddy System: An unlikely friendship blossoms with dignity in award-winner from France, The Intouchables.

Nominated for nine César Awards in its native France, it’s telling that The Intouchable’s only win went to its Senegelese co-star, Omar Sy. In between its mix of comedy and a very French strain of ...

Take This Waltz

Unfaithfully Yours: Take This Waltz serves up some great performances but not much else.

Actress/writer/director Sarah Polley – the Canadian indie darling who garnered an Oscar nod for Best Adapted Screenplay last year for her big-screen directorial debut Away From Her – continues to question marriage in her sophomore ...

The Dark Knight Rises

Darkest Knight: With the most anticipated release of the summer, Christopher Nolan reveals there are no heroes in Gotham.

This may be the darkest, the grimmest, the most depressing summer popcorn movie ever. It is not summery. It is not popcorny. There is no adventure here. There is no escapism. There is only grinding ...

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Peppy Puppy: Beasts of the Southern Wild merely manages to nail the meaning of life.

Not since Victor Erice’s 1973 film The Spirit of the Beehive has there been such a dreamily accurate depiction of what it must be like to be a child caught fast in events of tremendous ...

Ice Age: Continental Drift

Frozen in Time: Ice Age drips blandly and inoffensively with old shtick.

It’s movies like this one that make me despair. Because it is going to make a bazillion bucks at the box office around the world – the three previous flicks in the series have grossed ...

To Rome With Love

Spaghetti Told Western: Woody Allen’s To Rome With Love roams aimlessly through the ancient city.

The original, more euphonious title for Woody Allen’s 42nd feature film was The Bop Decameron, but Allen changed course, he told an interviewer, when he realized the illiterate masses (I paraphrase) didn’t have a clue ...

The Amazing Spider-Man

Eight-Legged Freak: A reboot of the epic franchise offers no reason for the retelling.

The Amazing Spider-Man? That’s a stretch. More like the Half-hearted Spider-Man. The Just-Sorta-There Spider-Man. The Familiar Spider-Man. Spider-Man 3 may be the least satisfying of Sam Raimi’s Peter Parker trilogy, but it’s still livelier than ...

Ted

Ted Conference: Seth McFarlane’s teddy bear pic has Family Guy fun, but still feels like it’s been done.

In a lesser universe, this story of the misadventures of a miraculous, talking teddy bear and his human, 35-year-old best friend forever might have featured Adam Sandler (as the voice of the bear) and Jim ...

Magic Mike

It’s Got No Clothes: Magic Mike is short on magic character development and nudity.

For a movie about guys taking their clothes off, Magic Mike is rather tame, and rather dull. Magic it certainly ain’t. Though the general consensus among fans seems to be that this is a film ...

Safety Not Guarenteed

Eye Opener: Safety Not Guaranteed rides two breakout stars to greatness.

It’s easy, I suppose, to sing the praises of Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation; the web series Troopers). Here, as Darius, an intern working for a glossy, trendy Seattle magazine, she’s droll, melancholy and transcendent ...

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter 

Bloody Brilliant: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter draws blood in surprisingly effective ways. 

So many things about Abraham Lincoln they did not tell us in school! His mother was killed by a vampire when he was a child, and then he dedicated his life to bringing vengeance down ...

Moonrise Kingdom

Rare Vision: Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom captures youthful innocence, awakening and heart.

Wes Anderson has honed his formally composed vernacular of kitschy nostalgic magic realism cinema to a super fine point. Making his debut animated film Fantastic Mr. Fox seems to have allowed the perpetually youthful filmmaker ...

Rock of Ages

Bang Yer Head: Rock of Ages amazes – by hitting capitalist chords you might not expect.

If there’s one thing that rock ‘n’ roll has understood from the beginning – to the consternation of pearl-clutching panty-sniffers everywhere – it’s that selling sex to horny girls and women is a license to ...

Prometheus

Game Over: Prometheus looks great, but fails to deliver on anything approaching the best of Ridley Scott.

Prometheus! It’s the Alien prequel we’ve all been waiting for all these many months. Just don’t go into it expecting facehuggers and chestbursters or pretty much any sort of sci-fi horror and humor and tension ...

Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted

Animal Style: Madagascar 3 is sweet enough for kids, amusing enough for parents and visually engaging enough for everyone. 

Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted is an unexpected, lovely and cheerful delight that features notably spectacular 3-D animation, which is no small feat given that every animated movie is released in 3-D. The colors pop, ...

Snow White and the Huntsman

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