Recent Stories
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
