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 ...
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 ...
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, ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Les Misérables
Sing Misery: Star-studded cast shows off powerful voices in remake of Hugo classic Les Misérables.
Les Misérables is a big, lavish Hollywood production of an equally extravagant Broadway musical. It looks and sounds phenomenal, and the sweeping story resonates on screen nearly as well as it does when viewed live. ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 – ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 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: ...
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 ...
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, ...
Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax
Agent Orange: Seussian saga The Lorax will win little kids with brightly colored characters but parents shouldn’t expect too much.
Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, much like the Happy Feet films before it, has all the subtlety of a hammer to the skull. Yes, environment-friendly themes are important to impart on impressionable young minds, but it’s ...
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Extremely Long, Incredibly Annoying: 9/11 serves as a cheap gimmick in this film take on Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel.
“As with anything,” Thomas tells his nine year-old son Oskar, “if you want to believe, you can find reasons to.” So true, and prophetic. For surely if you want to believe in Extremely Loud and ...
Contraband
Smuggler’s Blues: Contraband has Mark Wahlberg playing family man as he’s dragged back in to a life of crime.
Have you ever had the experience where one small thing takes you out of an otherwise decent movie? Contraband is an average action pic with plausible twists and a fun story. But the villain, played ...
Best Films for 2011
Art house and heavy punches top the list.
2011 was an overall solid year at the movies. It pushed boundaries, made us laugh, asked questions and, at its best, moved us to tears. But let’s start this list of the Top Ten movies ...
The Way
Dead Reckoning: Emilio Estevez and Martin Sheen combine for a surprisingly appealing redemption in The Way
Going into the screening of The Way I had only a slight notion of what the film was about. My understanding was that it would be sad, depressing, and would be about the grief a ...
Real Steel
Dead Battery: The robot fight movie Real Steel can’t punch its way out of a cliché bag.
How do you bring emotion to a story about robot boxing? Cheesy father-son drama, for starters. Making the story a shameless Rocky rip-off, for another. No doubt director Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum) had ...
Moneyball
Pitch Perfect: Brad Pitt, Moneyball win big by moving beyond baseball.
Baseball, it can be said, is no longer a sport for the masses. The games take forever, there’s often not much action, and the prevailing notion that it’s the “American Pastime” is more a vestige ...
Fight of Our Lives
Warrior knocks audiences to emotional places, deserves an Academy Award (or two).
Sports movies are rarely so good that they make me want to stand up and cheer, but Warrior did just that. It also made me cry. This is a powerful, heartbreaking story about two estranged ...
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark
Shadow Games: Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark wins with spooky gloom and solid acting.
The haunted house thriller can sometimes feel like a lost art, especially with advances in visual effects making it easy to conjure spirits out of nowhere. But like Insidious earlier this year, Don’t Be Afraid ...
Crazy, Stupid, Love
A dynamite cast can’t quite rescue Crazy, Stupid, Love.
Steve Carell, Julianne Moore, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Kevin Bacon and Marisa Tomei star in Crazy, Stupid, Love. It is unlikely you will find a better assemblage of talent anywhere. But wow, what a mediocre ...
F(ail) Buddies
Friends With Benefits lacks the money-shot moments.
Let’s get this out of the way: The only thing Friends With Benefits and Natalie Portman’s No Strings Attached have in common is that they’re both romantic comedies about friendships with casual sex. In terms ...
Hogwarts Wild
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 sends J.K. Rowling’s gang out with a bang.
Harry Potter deserved to go out on a high note, and with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, he has. This film is a fitting conclusion to a grand, 10-year saga told on ...
Cars 2
Disney/Pixar’s 'Cars 2' smokes the first installment with sublime visuals and fast action.
For all its fast-paced action and fish-out-of-water comedy, the first Cars was one-dimensional and lacked the heart that we’re used to from Disney/Pixar. Cars 2 isn’t going to overwhelm you with its heart either, but ...
Sucker Punch
Cheat Shot: Sucker Punch swings and misses on plot, but the visuals kick ass.
“You control this world,” psychiatrist Dr. Gorski (Carla Cugino) tells the women in a mental institution in Sucker Punch, and within those four words lies the film’s greatest virtues and biggest flaws. The virtues are ...
Battle: Los Angeles
L.A. Haze : Battle: Los Angeles has its moments, but they repeat themselves.
The first time we see the Marines in Battle: Los Angeles in a confined space fighting off an alien attack, it’s tense and exciting. Then it happens again. And again. And… ultimately the same scenario ...
The Adjustment Bureau
Destiny’s Fate: Matt Damon’s The Adjustment Bureau presents big questions with an iffy plot.
You know when something feels “right,” and everything in your body is telling you it’s the right thing to do? That impulse is at the heart of The Adjustment Bureau, only the hook is that ...
Gnomeo & Juliet
Gnome Run: Gnomeo & Juliet takes Shakespeare to kids (and only needs to be seen once).
Could this be it? Has Disney found a way to make Shakespeare appealing to kids? Gnomeo & Juliet may not be the most faithful retelling of Romeo & Juliet, but it is cute, clever and ...
The Rite
To Be Damned: The Rite should be exorcised from theaters (but not Anthony Hopkins).
The makers of The Rite have no right to ask people to pay money to see it. What a silly, derivative, easy movie this is, saved only marginally by Anthony Hopkins’ stellar-as-usual performance. Part of ...
Blue Valentine
Blue Valentine deserves Oscar consideration for acting, alternate approach to romance.
We’ve seen these characters many times: boy and girl in a storybook romance destined to last forever, and our final image of the happy couple is one of warm, loving embrace. But what happens next? ...
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Sinking Ship
The latest Chronicles of Narnia flounders on the high seas.
The best thing one can say about The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is that it’s not as painfully slow as the franchise’s last installment, Prince Caspian, in which after 140 ...
127 Hours
Hard Rock:
You’ve likely heard the expression “between a rock and a hard place,” but you’ve probably never thought about it the way it happens in 127 Hours. Or maybe you have: The film is based on ...
Unstoppable
Run Away From This Train: Unstoppable wastes its strong leads and exhilarating ending.
Once Unstoppable does the obvious and actually, you know, involves its main characters in its story, it’s a solid action thriller. The problem is it takes an hour for this to happen, and by then ...
Hereafter
Not Quite Dead: Hereafter neglects to address the big question at its core.
What is amazing about Hereafter is that in 129 minutes, nothing happens. Three separate storylines, location shooting in London, Paris and San Francisco, and nothing. For a movie that aspires to explore what happens after ...
Secretariat
Pulling Up Lame: Secretariat lacks a little giddy-up and go.
There’s a reason more movies aren’t made about horses: they’re boring. Unless it is pitch-black and ridden by the Headless Horseman, there’s not much a horse can offer besides looking nice, running and eating hay. ...
Too Greedy
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps tries to do too much.
The inspiration behind Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is intriguing: What happens when you take an icon – and some would say the icon – of the greed, power and excess of the 1980s and ...
Takers
Thieves Like Them: Takers is more fun when it focuses on the criminals than on the cops who are trying to catch them.
In heist movies, usually plots twist and turn and twist again only to have greed condemned for the sake of good. Been here, seen this. But ironically, it’s this expectation that makes Takers seem fresh: ...
Letters to Juliet
The latest remake of a classic romance, wastes talents of greats like Vanessa Redgrave in a pedestrian tale.
Letters to Juliet imagines, in its own way, what would have happened if star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet didn’t die, but merely went their separate ways. A cynic might say they saved one another years ...
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