Movie Reviews
We’re the Millers
There isn't much about "We're the Millers" that separates it from the typical snarky, quasi-feel-good raunchy comedy, but it deserves credit for one thing: finding a new twist on the familiar premise of mismatched strangers being forced to take a roa...
Europa Report
Between "Star Trek Into Darkness," "Oblivion," "After Earth," "Pacific Rim," and "Elysium," this summer has had no shortage of big-budget science-fiction spectacles. And while their entertainment value and profitability have varied, one thing they've...
The Spectacular Now
The first few seconds of "The Spectacular Now" give you a clear sense of its tone and direction. A high school senior named Sutter Keely (Miles Teller) is sitting at his computer, preparing to write an essay for his college application. He reads the ...
The Wolverine
When we last saw the Wolverine, he was losing part of his memory because someone shot him in the head with an adamantium bullet at the end of "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" (2009). Well, no, actually, the LAST time we saw him was when he had a cameo in "...
The To Do List
In "The To Do List," Aubrey Plaza plays a virginal high school valedictorian who decides, apropos of nothing, that she needs to spend the summer having every possible sexual experience as practice for college. (High school college-prep courses only t...
Only God Forgives
Nicolas Winding Refn had been making movies in his native Denmark for a dozen years before "Bronson," his razor-edged 2008 biopic of a notorious British criminal, earned him some notoriety in the English-speaking world. After this came 2011's "Drive,...
The Conjuring
Let's be blunt: most wide-release horror films are bad. They tend to be either watered-down, teen-friendly PG-13 mediocrities that aren't scary; or gruesome, R-rated endurance tests that aren't scary either. It almost feels miraculous when something ...
R.I.P.D.
In the unexciting and laugh-free action-comedy "R.I.P.D.," Ryan Reynolds plays a cop named Nick who dies and is assigned to the Rest in Peace Department, an afterlife police force in which he and a gruff, mismatched partner, Roy (Jeff Bridges) -- who...
Grown Ups 2
Believe it or not, Adam Sandler has never been in a sequel before. It only seems like it because his movies tend to be interchangeable. He plays a guy who dresses, talks, and acts like Adam Sandler; his real-life friends play the other characters; an...
Pacific Rim
If there's one thing we like to see in movies, it's two things fighting. If there's another thing we like to see in movies, it's two GIANT things fighting. That's the simple premise behind "Pacific Rim," an enthusiastically subtext-free sci-fi specta...
Fruitvale Station
In the early hours of Jan. 1, 2009, an unarmed 22-year-old man named Oscar Grant -- handcuffed and lying facedown -- was shot and killed by an Oakland transit police officer. New Year's Eve revelers captured the incident on their cellphones, and the ...
The Lone Ranger
The prospect of Johnny Depp starring in a movie directed by Gore Verbinski -- something epic and adventurous like the three "Pirates of the Caribbean" films they made together, not to mention a Western like their animated "Rango" -- sounds promising ...
The Way Way Back
Oh, sure, there's not much about "The Way Way Back" that's new or unique. It's a boy-oriented coming-of-age story in a year that's already seen some great ones ("Mud," "The Kings of Summer"), and it doesn't tread new ground or make new observations a...
Despicable Me 2
In the pilot episode of the animated sitcom "Despicable Me" -- which somehow appeared in movie theaters, despite clearly being meant for TV -- we were introduced to Gru (voiced by Steve Carell), a comically accented supervillain who adopted three lit...
White House Down
For a German guy, Roland Emmerich has demonstrated an unusual interest in American history, government, and iconography. Or in blowin' it up, anyway. The director of "Independence Day," "Godzilla," "The Patriot," "The Day After Tomorrow," and "2012" ...
The Heat
Nothing will sink a buddy comedy faster than poor chemistry between the leads, which can seem unfair if the script is good. But the opposite is also true: a pair of actors with real comic energy, who complement one another and work fluidly as a team,...
Byzantium
The Irish director Neil Jordan is probably best known for "The Crying Game" and "Interview with the Vampire," both released two decades ago, but he has continued to make interesting movies since then -- see: "Breakfast on Pluto," "The Brave One," "T...
The Attack (Arabic/Hebrew)
The complicated situation in Israel, with its uneasy peace and frequent bursts of non-peace between Jews and Arabs, has given rise to numerous compelling stories, and will no doubt continue to do so for as long as there is conflict in that region (i....
Monsters University
College is often a time of growth and development for people, and it's evidently no different for monsters. In "Monsters University," Mike Wazowski, the spherical lime-green cyclops voiced by Billy Crystal, faces the important question of whether he ...
World War Z
Significant rewrites, re-shoots, and other meddling have resulted in "World War Z" bearing only a casual resemblance to the very enjoyable book it's based on, but the movie version -- directed by Marc Forster ("Quantum of Solace," "The Kite Runner") ...
Maniac
You can usually tell by a film's description whether it's something you might be interested in seeing. You don't need a critic for that; nobody knows better than you do when a movie is your "type." All you need a review for (if you need one at all) i...
Call Me Kuchu (documentary)
There hasn't been a lot of good P.R. for Uganda in the last few years, what with its parliament's proposed legislation that would make homosexual activity punishable by death. "Call Me Kuchu," a powerful documentary by first-time filmmakers Katherine...
The Stroller Strategy (French)
France has a thriving film industry, the biggest in Europe, with more than 250 productions a year. Of those, only a few dozen make their way into U.S. cinemas, usually because they're good, or have notable names attached, or will appeal to American a...
The Bling Ring
When a group of over-privileged, under-supervised L.A. teenagers steal millions of dollars in cash and property from celebrities like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, it's easy to feel superior to everyone involved. Easy and appropriate: you most like...
Man of Steel
We've always known in the back of our minds that there was a science-fiction angle to the Superman saga -- he's an extra-terrestrial, after all -- but none of the big-screen versions have emphasized it. Until now. "Man of Steel" starts with a rousing...
This Is the End
"This Is the End" is a bawdy, marijuana-scented inside joke about the Apocalypse happening during James Franco's star-studded house party, with Franco, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Michael Cera, and others play...
Much Ado About Nothing
Twenty years have passed since Kenneth Branaugh's definitive and very traditional version of Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing," so it's high time some other well-read merrymaker came along with a shiny new one. Joss Whedon, the TV geek-wizard be...
The Purge
Some movies have good premises that get squandered in the execution, but "The Purge" is the other way around. It takes a bad premise and makes it work, more or less. You won't believe that any part of it is even remotely plausible, but you'll go alon...
The History of Future Folk
Austin's Fantastic Fest is an annual week-long celebration of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, stoner comedy, Asian semi-porn, and other non-mainstream genres -- basically any movie that could be described as "awesome" or "insane." The fare is often gruesome...
Now You See Me
When you see a magician do something in a live show that seems impossible, you know there's a trick to it. Either he didn't actually do the thing he pretended to do, or he did it by some method other than the impossible method he pretended to use. Yo...
After Earth
The reason M. Night Shyamalan's name isn't all over the advertising for "After Earth," which he directed and co-wrote, is undoubtedly that the marketing department knew the Shyamalan brand is no longer the robust selling point it once was. But it was...
The Kings of Summer
Someone desiring a nostalgic double feature about what it's like to be a common American boy on the cusp of adolescence could hardly do better than "Mud" and "The Kings of Summer," both now in theaters and begging to help you spend a languid afternoo...
The East
You'd be forgiven for assuming a movie about eco-terrorism and corporate espionage is probably a snoozer. My eyes glaze over just seeing those terms, and a vague title like "The East" doesn't do much to sell it, either. But as it turns out, "The East...
Furious 6
Near the beginning of "Furious 6," upon viewing a crime scene that involved a great deal of vehicular mayhem, FBI agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) says, "There's only one crew in the world that could get this done." The punchline is that he's not talking...
The Hangover Part III
Remember how "The Hangover Part II" was a lukewarm rehash of "The Hangover," almost beat-for-beat the same story, with little originality? Todd Phillips evidently heard our complaints and has addressed them in "The Hangover Part III," which is nothin...
Frances Ha
Twentysomething drifts aimlessly, tries to figure out what to do with his or her life. That one-line summary is practically its own genre in independent filmmaking, and while plenty of movies dealing with the subject have been just fine, the sub-par ...
Star Trek Into Darkness
"Star Trek Into Darkness" has a great antagonist, a terrorist calling himself John Harrison, played by the increasingly famous British actor Benedict Cumberbatch. His voice drips with pure, theatrical villainy, but Cumberbatch plays him believably, l...
The Great Gatsby
Baz Luhrmann's half-frenetic, half-subdued version of "The Great Gatsby" is almost 100 percent faithful to the novel in terms of plot, and almost zero percent faithful in terms of theme, character, and impact. I don't doubt that Luhrmann and his co-w...
Stories We Tell (documentary)
Toronto native Sarah Polley, the daughter of performers, started acting in Canadian TV and films as a child, and eventually established a steady career on both sides of the border in movies like "Go," "My Life Without Me," and "Dawn of the Dead." Whe...
Sightseers
One thing you should know about me is that I love "Kill List," a sinister, unsettling British thriller released in the U.K. in 2011 and the U.S. in 2012. As off-the-rails as that movie gets, I love its audacity. Its director, Ben Wheatley, has follow...
The Iceman
Michael Shannon is having what they call "a moment," with an acclaimed lead performance in 2011's "Take Shelter," ongoing praise for HBO's "Boardwalk Empire," and a special mention in almost every review of "Premium Rush," about which he seems to hav...
Iron Man 3
Tony Stark was profoundly affected by what happened in "The Avengers," what with the arrival of Norse gods and malevolent aliens and other things that would tend to disrupt a person's worldview. In "Iron Man 3," the billionaire weapons-designer-turne...
Pain & Gain
"Pain & Gain" is a brash, puerile action-comedy of errors about a trio of muscle-obsessed idiots who set out to extort money from a sleazy Miami businessman by kidnapping and torturing him. Michael Bay, who directed it, is almost the right person...
Mud
Jeff Nichols' last film, "Taking Shelter," was about a man trying to protect his wife and daughter. Before that, he made "Shotgun Stories," in which two sets of half-brothers feud after their father's death. His third film, "Mud," takes a 14-year-old...
An Oversimplification of Her Beauty
While it's true that nobody makes a film entirely alone, some movies are closer to being a one-person operation than others. That can be good or bad. Artists love having total creative freedom. But the ones most likely to get it are young, inexperien...
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
In "The Reluctant Fundamentalist," a bright, Princeton-educated Pakistani man named Changez (Riz Ahmed) comes to realize that over-emphasizing the fundamental principles of any endeavor can lead to a rigid, black-and-white view of things that's too r...
At Any Price
"It's gonna be a great harvest," says a farmer's wife near the end of "At Any Price." She's referring to the corn crop, but what this resonant, well-acted drama has made clear by this point is that "you reap what you sow" applies to everything. For s...
Oblivion
Joseph Kosinski's second movie, "Oblivion," is a lot like his first, "Tron: Legacy." Both are gorgeous-looking, futuristic sci-fi tales that benefit from amazing computer-generated imagery and a few nifty action beats, but suffer from a lack of human...
Antiviral
If there was any question whether Brandon Cronenberg is the true offspring of David Cronenberg, the matter should be settled by "Antiviral," a slow-burning body horror that suggests the younger C-Berg is as twisted as his dad. I don't even want to kn...
42
The closest "42" comes to revealing anything about the actual personality or character of Jackie Robinson -- the first black player in Major League Baseball -- is when he privately expresses frustration at being beholden to someone for a kindness. "I...
Scary Movie 5
I'd be tempted to say that nothing in "Scary Movie 5" is funny, but the outtakes that play over the closing credits show multiple cast members struggling to keep from laughing, so obviously I'm mistaken. Clearly the film is hilarious. Maybe there was...
The Angels’ Share
“The Angels’ Share” comes to us from Ken Loach, the socially conscious British director whose “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” won the Palme d’Or in 2006. But “The Angels’ Share,” written by regular collaborator Paul Laverty, is much more lightheart...
To the Wonder
Terrence Malick, the idiosyncratic director of "The Tree of Life," "Badlands," "Days of Heaven," "The New World," and "The Thin Red Line," probably has as many detractors as he has admirers. His movies tend to be untraditional, after all, and one per...
Upstream Color
Ever since "Primer" won Sundance's grand jury prize in 2004, indie-watchers have been wondering what its writer-director, Shane Carruth, would do next. "Primer" was his first movie, you see, and he made it for $7,000. Who is this guy? Where did he co...
Evil Dead
The boilerplate justification for remaking a beloved film is that someone wanted to "introduce it to a new generation," or "bring it into the modern world," or something along those lines. Most remakes succeed only in introducing money into the filmm...
Simon Killer
"Simon Killer" opens on a blue-filtered panoramic view of Paris that turns into a red-filtered spasm of strobe lights before cutting to Simon (Brady Corbet), a handsomely scruffy young man, asleep on a bus. The implication is that the light show -- w...
Wrong
Quentin Dupieux's last film, "Rubber," was about a sentient automobile tire that used the power of its mind to kill people. His followup, the aptly titled "Wrong," is more absurd and more laugh-out-loud silly than "Rubber"; it's also less focused and...
Room 237 (documentary)
"Room 237" is a shoddily assembled but entertaining documentary about several crazy people’s crazy theories about hidden messages in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining.” One enthusiast is convinced the film is all about the Holocaust; another asserts tha...
Admission
Everyone who sees "Admission" will be someone who likes Tina Fey and Paul Rudd. We know this because everyone likes Tina Fey and Paul Rudd. The downside is that everyone will leave "Admission" thinking: That movie was not worthy of Tina Fey and Paul ...
The Place Beyond the Pines
"The Place Beyond the Pines" is a brooding drama of epic scope set in the New York town of Schenectady, whose name comes from a Mohawk word loosely translated as "the place beyond the pines." (Thanks, Wikipedia!) So that explains the title. But there...
G.I. Joe: Retaliation
From what I recall of "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" -- which is to say, from what I gather by reading my review of it -- the 2009 franchise starter was silly but not terribly stupid, as if an enthusiastic group of 10-year-old boys had been given $175...
The Croods
"The Croods" is an ABC sitcom that somehow got turned into a cartoon and released in movie theaters. It's about a family of cavemen: barrel-chested, authoritative father Grug (voiced by Nicolas Cage); long-suffering, secretly-the-smart-one mother Ugg...
Olympus Has Fallen
"Olympus Has Fallen" is easily the best "Die Hard" movie of the year, and I include the year's actual "Die Hard" movie in that statement. It offers a worthy, wise-cracking hero (Gerard Butler), a nefarious villain (Rick Yune), some rah-rah action, Aa...
My Brother the Devil
The lives and culture of Muslims in the Western world have been the focus of numerous films since the turn of the century, many of them austere dramas examining the torturous relationship between ordinary, faithful followers of Islam and their extrem...
Gimme the Loot
You don't have to be an old prude to be a little turned off by the description of "Gimme the Loot." It's about teenage graffiti artists (which is to say, vandals) who smoke and sell weed, commit numerous petty thefts, attempt a burglary, and swear li...
Reality (Italian)
Many of us first became aware of Italian director Matteo Garrone a few years ago, when his "Gomorrah," a brutally unflinching look at modern organized crime, earned praise at Cannes, Toronto, and on the art-house circuit. How has Garrone followed thi...
Ginger & Rosa
The first image in Sally Potter's aching coming-of-age story "Ginger & Rosa" is the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima in 1945. At that very moment, thousands of miles away in a London hospital, the title characters' mothers give birth to them. The at...
Beyond the Hills (Romanian)
Romanian director Cristian Mungiu's abortion drama "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" won the Palme d'Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. It was his second feature; his first, "Occidental" (2002), had also played at Cannes. I assume, therefore, that the...
Oz the Great and Powerful
You wanted a prequel to "The Wizard of Oz," and you got one! It's a very popular novel and stage musical called "Wicked." Also, here is this, "Oz the Great and Powerful," a marvelously candy-colored and overall-pretty-fun-nothing-great-but-it's-all-r...
Somebody Up There Likes Me
Bob Byington, one of several oddball filmmakers who call Austin home, has perhaps out-quirked himself with "Somebody Up There Likes Me," a whimsically deadpan comedy spanning three decades in the lives of hapless waiter Max (Keith Poulson) and his be...
Jack the Giant Slayer
You can see the business logic behind a movie like "Jack the Giant Slayer." Take a familiar fairy tale (one that's in the public domain so you don't have to pay anybody's estate), flesh out the backstory, find a way to give it an epic-sized climactic...
Stoker
"Stoker" is the first English-language film by Korean macabre master Park Chan-wook, whose violent, Tarantino-esque tales ("Oldboy," "Joint Security Area") have been providing perverse pleasures to international audiences since the turn of the centur...
21 & Over
"21 & Over" is a more uneven, junior version of "The Hangover," written and directed by the same men who wrote that film, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore. Set over the course of 24 hours at a fictional university in the Pacific Northwest, the raucous, ...
Snitch
Like Prohibition before it, the "war on drugs" is a disastrous and costly failure that has needlessly imprisoned thousands of non-violent offenders, ruined countless lives, and made dangerous criminals richer -- all without doing much to actually red...
Bless Me, Ultima
Rudolfo Anaya's 1972 novel "Bless Me, Ultima," a coming-of-age story set in the Mexican-American communities of New Mexico in the 1940s, was a word-of-mouth bestseller for two decades before it finally got a mass-market release. It took another two d...
NO (Spanish)
I assume you're well-versed in Chilean politics of the 1980s. I mean, who isn't, right? But even if you're not -- even if you're, say, an American who barely recalls the name Pinochet and is already exhausted by the 2012 U.S. elections -- Pablo Larra...
Beautiful Creatures
There's a lengthy, dragging middle section of the supernatural teen romance "Beautiful Creatures" that threatens to sink the whole enterprise. Tellingly, it's when the nuts and bolts of the plot kick in: as the witch's pivotal 16th birthday approache...
A Good Day to Die Hard
If "A Good Day to Die Hard" didn't have the words "Die Hard" in its title, nobody would pay it the slightest bit of attention. It would be just another brainless action film, the kind that's somehow chaotic and tedious simultaneously, the kind where ...
Safe Haven
Oh, sure, it's popular to make fun of Nicholas Sparks movies. It's very "cool" and "trendy" to pile on the insults every time a new one is released, three or four times a year. But do you want to know the real reason why they're held up to such ridic...
The Playroom
You won't need a degree in film studies to figure out the significance of the story that the four Cantwell children make up in "The Playroom," an emotionally rich drama set in suburbia in 1975. Gathered around a candle to simulate a campfire setting,...
A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III
The fascinating thing about "A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III" -- and it is almost literally the only fascinating thing about this woeful mistake of a movie -- is how much genuine talent it squanders.
The writer-director is Roman Cop...
Identity Thief
You have to admit, it takes some guts to rip off a hundred other movies and then call the result "Identity Thief." That sort of brazenness would be admired by the scoundrel at the center of this wearying, derivative comedy, if she were capable of hig...
Side Effects
The important thing to know about "Side Effects" -- which Steven Soderbergh says will be his last theatrical film for a while, maybe forever -- is that whatever you're thinking it's going to be, it probably is not that. Pardon my vagueness as I avoid...
Warm Bodies
Of all the zombie movies so far, few (if any) have told their stories from the zombies' point of view. The undead can't talk, think, or learn, and a protagonist generally needs to be able to do at least two of those things.
"Warm Bodies" takes a ...
Parker
As long as there is January, there will be mediocre-but-not-wholly-meritless action movies in theaters, and many of them will star Jason Statham. (The others will star Liam Neeson.) The latest, based on Richard Stark's novel "Flashfire" but unimagina...
I Am Not a Hipster
The non-hipster at the center of "I Am Not a Hipster" is an indie musician in San Diego who probably wouldn't be mistaken for a hipster anyway. He's more of a temperamental jerk. He's also grieving and depressed, which has led him to reject the fun t...
Gangster Squad
If "Gangster Squad" had been released last September, as originally scheduled, it would have been forgotten by now. There's a good chance it would have been forgotten by October. Instead, after some reshoots to avoid a coincidental resemblance to las...
Les Miserables
When it became his privilege to direct the movie version of the "Les Misérables" stage musical that has enthralled the world for more than a quarter-century, Tom Hooper made one crucial, momentous decision. Instead of following the normal practice of...
Django Unchained
Quentin Tarantino's eighth feature film, "Django Unchained," is his longest, his most narratively straightforward, and his N-word-iest. The godfather of modern gonzo filmmaking addresses American slavery and race relations the same way he has address...
On the Road
(This is a review of the 137-minute version that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. It has since been reedited and shortened.)
It has long been supposed by many that "On the Road" -- Jack Kerouac's 1957 autobiographical novel that defined the...
Jack Reacher
I understand why fans of Lee Child's series of Jack Reacher novels would be upset by the casting of Tom Cruise in the lead role. Jack Reacher is supposed to be a tall, blond, muscle-bound, physically powerful brute of a man, and Cruise isn't any of t...
This Is 40
The very first joke in "This Is 40" -- a movie made in 2012 by experienced comedy professionals -- is about Viagra. That lazy, hackneyed start is a bad sign because it suggests that writer-director Judd Apatow, the reigning champion of urbanely vulga...
Barbara (German)
If there's one thing we've learned from movies set in East Germany during the Cold War, it's that those of us who didn't experience it firsthand will never fully grasp just how difficult life was behind the Iron Curtain. As such, "Barbara," a quietly...
The Impossible
Some 250,000 people died in the tsunami that hit Southeast Asia the day after Christmas in 2004, the fourth-highest toll of any natural disaster of the previous hundred years. That's a quarter-million stories that ended unhappily, not to mention the ...
Zero Dark Thirty
Kathryn Bigelow, who'd won an Oscar for directing the soldier drama "The Hurt Locker," and Mark Boal, who'd won an Oscar for writing it, were already collaborating on a film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden when history provided them with a more sa...
Amour (French)
It's not surprising that a Michael Haneke film won the top prize at Cannes -- it had happened before, with "The White Ribbon." What's surprising about the 2012 honors for "Amour" is that it was the "safe" choice this time. The austere Austrian who ma...
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
The main problem with "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" is one that wasn't unexpected at all. It sounded like a bad idea when honorary Middle-earth resident Peter Jackson declared his intention to stretch J.R.R. Tolkien's average-length novel into ...
Stand Up Guys
I can only assume that when Fisher Stevens read the "Stand Up Guys" screenplay, he thought: This isn't very good. But perhaps it will be moderately enjoyable if I can get someone great to play the leads! (I don't wish to contemplate a scenario where ...
Hyde Park on Hudson
"Hyde Park on Hudson" uses real events from the summer of 1939 to tell what is essentially two stories. One is about President Franklin D. Roosevelt's intimate relationship with Daisy Suckley, a distant cousin who lives near his vacation home in Hyde...
Playing for Keeps
"Playing for Keeps" is the bargain of the season. No matter what kind of drab, derivative fluff you prefer, this exceptionally toothless comedy has something to offer!
Do you like forgettable movies about a charming but mildly irresponsible man w...
