Movie Reviews
The Collection
As we learned in "The Collector," the 2009 torture-horror throwaway from the men who wrote the last eight or nine "Saw's," there is a serial killer on the loose whose shtick is setting up complicated booby traps in people's houses so that he can feed...
Killing Them Softly
I haven't read "Cogan's Trade," George V. Higgins' Boston-set crime novel that's been turned into the movie "Killing Them Softly," so I can't fully report on how faithful the adaptation is. But I do know that it was published in 1974, which means it ...
Rust and Bone (French)
Jacques Audiard, the French director who has quietly emerged as one of the best of his countrymen with films like the Oscar-nominated "A Prophet," "The Beat That My Heart Skipped," and "Read My Lips," continues his exploration of criminals and lowlif...
The Central Park Five (documentary)
Uninterested in creating false suspense over how things will turn out, the makers of "The Central Park Five" begin their documentary with audio of Matias Reyes describing how he savagely beat and raped a jogger late on the night of April 19, 1989, in...
Hitchcock
Despite its thorough-sounding title, "Hitchcock" is not a biopic of the Master of Suspense, but rather a lightweight behind-the-scenes account of the making of his most successful film, "Psycho," in late 1959 and early 1960. And it's barely even that...
Life of Pi
"Life of Pi" is one of the most gorgeous-looking movies I've ever seen, with beautiful live action images blending with CGI to create crisp, dazzling pictures of natural beauty and transcendent wonder. Director Ang Lee ("Brokeback Mountain") and cine...
Red Dawn
There are many reasons not to remake 1984's "Red Dawn." One good reason is that it's a stupid movie. Another is that it's a paranoid fantasy based on Cold War fears that no longer have any basis in reality. Yet some people have remade "Red Dawn" anyw...
Rise of the Guardians
A story in which mythical figures like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy team up to protect children from the Boogeyman sounds like a sure bet, and William Joyce's "Guardians of Childhood" book series has evidently found plenty of ma...
Silver Linings Playbook
As its title suggests, "Silver Linings Playbook" is about looking for the bright side in life, acknowledging that sometimes it's a victory just to be awake and functioning and wearing clothes. That's an upbeat and sensitive message coming from David ...
Breaking Dawn — Part 2
Even those of us who hadn't read the book could tell by watching "Breaking Dawn -- Part 1," with its many scenes of inactivity and waiting around, that the story didn't need to be split into two films. "Breaking Dawn -- Part 2" confirms that suspicio...
Funeral Kings
Of all the coming-of-age films set among adolescents at Catholic schools, "Funeral Kings" is one of the most heartfelt and charming, not to mention one of the most realistically vulgar. The potty-mouthed 13- and 14-year-old boys who populate the feat...
In Their Skin
This is reductive and unfair and I'm going to feel bad for saying it, but "In Their Skin" could be described as "Funny Games" lite. The scenario is similar to the one in Michael Haneke's infamous home-invasion thriller, though with key differences in...
Skyfall
There aren't many franchises that this applies to, but if anyone ever needs advice on how to make a 50-year-old movie series seem fresh and relevant again, "Skyfall" is the model. James Bond's 23rd outing, in which he is once again played by a steely...
Lincoln
Well, of course Steven Spielberg's history lesson about the abolition of slavery is entertaining, big-hearted, and soul-stirring. With its clear-cut moral issues and patriotic significance, "Lincoln" is right in Spielberg's wheelhouse, and Daniel Day...
This Must Be the Place
The tricky thing about reviewing "This Must Be the Place" is that every description of it makes it sound much more entertaining than it is. It stars Sean Penn as an aging Goth rocker named Cheyenne -- think Robert Smith from The Cure -- who goes sear...
Flight
There's an unusual moral dilemma at the center of "Flight," and some hints at exploring how belief in a higher power affects a person's attitude toward life's tragedies. But mostly "Flight" is an ordinary drama about addiction and recovery, made some...
Wreck-It Ralph
Whichever Disney employee said, "Let's do 'Toy Story,' but with video game characters," I hope he or she got a big fat raise, if only to compensate for the seething jealousy coming from co-workers kicking themselves for not thinking of it first. It's...
Sleep Tight (Spanish)
The basic premise of "Sleep Tight" is simple enough; it's a stalker movie. But some ingenious variations, shrewd direction, and a killer lead performance render it fresh and absolutely entertaining. You'll wonder how you never thought of this yoursel...
Fun Size
"Fun Size" is a trick-or-treat comedy aimed at tween girls. As such, the film's potential audience -- 11-15-year-old girls who are interested in seeing a Halloween comedy -- must be vanishingly small, but that's the marketing department's problem, no...
Cloud Atlas
"All boundaries are conventions waiting to be transcended," says one of the characters in "Cloud Atlas," an ambitious and frequently enthralling new epic directed by Andy and Lana Wachowski and Tom Tykwer. If that line and the others like it are in t...
Alex Cross
You can't blame Tyler Perry for wanting to prove himself a bankable star outside of his own movies, and maybe he has the potential to do it. But he won't be helped by the dim-witted "Alex Cross," a shallow and threadbare detective thriller that's bas...
Paranormal Activity 4
Give the "Paranormal Activity" people some credit. They've made three sequels now to what was initially a standalone, not-meant-to-be-a-franchise horror film, and they've done it without becoming a laughable parody of themselves. They've expanded the...
The Sessions
"The Sessions" tells a true story about a physically disabled man who enlists a professional sex surrogate to help him through the difficulties, both emotional and logistical, of losing his virginity. That may sound like shameless Oscar-bait -- a per...
Holy Motors (French)
It is gratifying to discover that, in the year 2012, after a century of movies and many centuries of human culture, mankind is still capable of finding new ways of being weird. Leos Carax's "Holy Motors" is not just a gloriously unusual film, it's un...
Sinister
Your pants. Do you like having them scared off you? Then you and your pants will enjoy "Sinister," a deeply frightening horror film that takes its obligation to alarm very seriously. If this isn't the most disquieting movie I see in 2012, I don't kn...
Argo
When it comes to crazy plans, there's a fine line between "just crazy enough to work" and "so crazy it won't work." That line is explored to great effect in "Argo," a supremely entertaining and stimulating film, directed by Ben Affleck, about the tim...
Here Comes the Boom
The thing about the boom is that it will come whether you're ready for it or not. The boom follows no schedule, obeys no law but the law of the boom. We would be prudent, therefore, to heed such warnings of imminent boom-coming as we are given, inclu...
Seven Psychopaths
Onscreen titles identify which characters in "Seven Psychopaths" are the official seven psychopaths, but the selection is arbitrary. Irish playwright-turned-filmmaker Martin McDonagh ("In Bruges") has populated this violently funny, self-referential ...
V/H/S
We've reached the point where there are so many "found-footage" horror films that we have to cram several of them into one package to avoid glutting the marketplace. The result, "V/H/S," includes six segments by nine directors, and like most antholog...
Frankenweenie
Tim Burton fans have had a rough time the last several years, but "Frankenweenie" is a return to form for the mischievous old macabre-meister -- fitting, since it's an expansion of a live-action short Burton made for Disney way back in 1984, before h...
Taken 2
Look, nobody's saying that "Taken," in which Liam Neeson flexed previously unknown action-star muscles to rescue his daughter from flesh-traders, was some kind of masterpiece. But it worked. If I may quote myself: "It's a delightfully dizzying balm t...
Fat Kid Rules the World
(Reviewed at the 2012 South By Southwest Film Festival.) I hope whichever distributor is savvy enough to pick up the irresistibly funny and honest teen comedy "Fat Kid Rules the World" is also smart enough to market it correctly. They’ll want to down...
The Paperboy
Perhaps you have heard that "The Paperboy" is the movie in which Nicole Kidman pees on Zac Efron. That does happen -- it's to soothe a jellyfish sting, so maybe not quite as kinky as you thought/hoped -- but to focus on that one scene is to overlook ...
Hotel Transylvania
After years of fruitless searching, it would appear that modern science has finally found the right place for Adam Sandler's crew: children's cartoons. "Hotel Transylvania," a congenial toon about a monsters-only resort accidentally discovered by a h...
Looper
And for his next trick, Rian Johnson -- writer/director of the high-school noir "Brick" and the whimsical con-men caper "The Brothers Bloom" -- delivers "Looper," a satisfying sci-fi thriller about time travel, telekinesis, and human weakness. It has...
Pitch Perfect
College a cappella groups are cool now, apparently, which must be at once gratifying and frustrating for the hundreds of people who participated in them 20 years ago, when they weren't. "Pitch Perfect," a scattershot but infectious comedy in the vein...
Trouble with the Curve
"Trouble with the Curve" begins with Clint Eastwood standing at a toilet, trying to sweet-talk the pee out of his bladder. I can't say the film gets much better after that, but I can say that this is the only scene in which Eastwood speaks directly t...
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
It's easy to see why "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," Stephen Chbosky's 1999 coming-of-age novel about a troubled high school freshman, was a massive hit with adolescent readers (and more than a few adults). Without condescending or relying on trit...
End of Watch
"End of Watch," a visceral and strangely gripping story of police brotherhood in the rough parts of Los Angeles, succeeds at some of the things "Act of Valor" failed at earlier this year. That movie tried to convey the camaraderie and bravery of the ...
Resident Evil: Retribution
Since "Resident Evil: Retribution" starts with a slow-motion battle scene shown in reverse, the easy joke to make is something about how the franchise is moving backwards. Usually it's best to avoid the easy jokes, but this film is such a lazy, uncre...
Liberal Arts
Maybe it's for the best that I never saw "happythankyoumoreplease," the ensemble comedy that marked "How I Met Your Mother" star Josh Radnor's debut as a writer and director. The consensus was that it resembled an uninspired sitcom, and I think we've...
The Cold Light of Day
One reliable way to spot a mediocre film is when it stars big-name American actors but doesn't play in U.S. theaters until after it's been released everywhere else. That's certainly the case with "The Cold Light of Day," an unnecessary but inoffensiv...
The Words
The closest thing to a point that I can find in "The Words" is when one writer tells another, "My tragedy is that I loved the words more than I loved the woman who inspired them." That theme is worth exploring, but "The Words" doesn't do it. Instead,...
REC 3: Genesis
I missed "REC 2," which was barely released in the U.S., but those familiar with the quasi-zombie horror franchise report that part 3 has little in common with it. Writer/director Paco Plaza, going solo after co-directing the first two with Jaume Bal...
The Good Doctor
True fact: Of the 14 movies Orlando Bloom has starred in that played theatrically in the United States, 11 were set in a fantasy world or the historical past, eight required his character to brandish a sword or bow, and two had him using a firearm. I...
The Tall Man
Pascal Laugier’s followup to his notoriously graphic and painful revenge-horror film "Martyrs" (2008) is "The Tall Man," a rather tame mystery with little onscreen violence and no “extreme” content. This shift in tone, while potentially disappointing...
Lawless
The recipe for potent movie moonshine is as follows. You take an indestructible hero, a scrappy underdog, a memorable villain, and a dame with a checkered past; mix in several moments of triumphant violence; throw in some wisecracks; boil it for a co...
Sleepwalk with Me
One of the highest compliments I can give to "Sleepwalk with Me," Mike Birbiglia's good-natured autobiographical comedy, is that it made me want to seek out more of his work as a comedian and writer.
His lightly fictionalized alter ego, Matt Pand...
Premium Rush
Every time something moronic like "Transformers" makes a lot of money, some of the people who liked it will telling the disapproving critics, "Not everything has to be Shakespeare! Just relax and enjoy the popcorn!" What these folks overlook is that ...
ParaNorman
The young boy in "ParaNorman" suffers from what you might call "Sixth Sense" syndrome, which is the ability to see and communicate with dead people. There are plenty of dead people for him to encounter, too: he lives in New England (that place is cra...
Sparkle
"Sparkle" is a remake of a 1976 film about a girl group breaking into the music business, but it's cobbled together so generically that it might as well be a remake of every other movie on that subject. Only two things distinguish it from, say, a str...
Cosmopolis
The works of Canadian oddball David Cronenberg are hit-or-miss for me, and "Cosmopolis" -- a sterile, mannered adaptation of Don DeLillo's 2003 novel about a young billionaire riding around Manhattan in his bulletproof limo -- is a miss, a stylish ex...
The Odd Life of Timothy Green
"The Odd Life of Timothy Green" is a fanciful story that has the same basic concept as two otherwise very different films: "Mary Poppins" and "Weird Science." In all three movies, two people make a list of the qualities they'd want in an ideal nanny/...
Red Hook Summer
After dabbling with World War II in "Miracle at St. Anna" and mainstream popcorn action in "Inside Man," Spike Lee returns to his old stomping grounds -- geographically and thematically -- with "Red Hook Summer." This rambling drama is set in the...
The Bourne Legacy
Oh, you thought Jason Bourne was the only super-spy the CIA had created? That's adorable. It's adorable that you thought that! Of course the CIA had other test subjects too, all just as lethal with their hands, feet, and rolled-up magazines as Bourne...
The Campaign
As comedies go, "The Campaign" is reasonably funny, though it doesn't even approach the great things its stars, Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis, have done in the past. As political satires go, it's broad and obvious, seldom clever. It starts with ...
Hope Springs
I've never been married, let alone been to a marriage counselor, so I can't be certain that "Hope Springs" is authentic. But its depiction of fizzling marriages and couples therapy sure feels like it rings true, and it sure seemed to hit home with th...
Celeste & Jesse Forever
The first few minutes of "Celeste & Jesse Forever" establish a playful, silly relationship between the twentysomething title characters, portrayed by Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg. They banter like the best of friends, they tease without hurting...
Total Recall
The remake of "Total Recall" is a total reboot, forsaking the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger version and going back to the source material, Philip K. Dick's 1966 short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale," which it forsakes in entirely different ...
The Watch
Not much about "The Watch" is surprising, though whether that's good or bad depends on your view. The sophomorically dirty R-rated comedy has performances by Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, and Richard Ayoade that are approximately what you'd ...
Step Up Revolution
"Enough with performance art," someone says in "Step Up Revolution." "It's time for protest art!" Yes, at long last, the street dancers at the center of this energetic but silly franchise will use their terpsichorean skills not just to delight onlook...
Killer Joe
"Killer Joe" begins with Gina Gershon answering the door to her mobile home in a T-shirt and no pants (aka "Donald Ducking it"), which disturbs the man knocking, who is her stepson. The movie doesn't get any classier from there -- nor will you want i...
Ruby Sparks
It was in an essay about Cameron Crowe's "Elizabethtown" that film critic Nathan Rabin coined the term "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" to describe a type of "bubbly, shallow" female character who exists "to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life...
The Dark Knight Rises
You may recall that the last time a series of Batman movies ended, it was with rubber nipples, Chris O'Donnell, and ice puns. Christopher Nolan's 21st-century trilogy, which started with "Batman Begins" and reached its zenith with "The Dark Knight," ...
Savages
Every film Oliver Stone has made in this century has been set in the world of finance, politics, or history. Now we come to "Savages," a vaguely sleazy pulp drama that addresses those topics obliquely but is mainly filled with the director's other fa...
The Amazing Spider-Man
Every movie needs to stand on its own two feet, and you could argue that there's no reason to compare a remake to the original if the original is old, obscure, or otherwise unlikely to have been seen by your audience. But "Spider-Man" came out ten ye...
Ted
There are so many things that "Ted" gets right that the things it gets wrong are baffling. The impertinently vulgar live-action directorial debut from "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane cleverly subverts a lot of movie tropes, suggesting ingenuity ...
Magic Mike
When I tell you that "Magic Mike" is about a male stripper who is played by talking beef slab Channing Tatum, who drew from his own pre-stardom experiences as a stripper to inspire the screenplay, you assume the movie is a wild party of sweaty thongs...
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Hushpuppy, the little girl at the center of "Beasts of the Southern Wild," lives in squalor and ignorance in an especially water-logged part of the Louisiana bayou nicknamed the Bathtub. Separated from "the dry world" by a levee, Hushpuppy and a coup...
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
The problem with coming up with the title first and the story later is that sometimes you don't get around to coming up with the story. "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" seems to be an example of this, promising so much campy-awesome historical-ficti...
Brave
Disney animation is big on the whole "princess" thing, especially if you expand the definition of "princess," as Disney's marketers do, to include basically any female protagonist. Yet somehow Pixar -- in business with Disney since "Toy Story" and no...
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
"Seeking a Friend for the End of the World" is about exactly what it sounds like it's about. A 70-mile-wide asteroid is headed for Earth. There's no way to stop it. Our governments presumably tried all the stuff from "Armageddon" and it didn't work. ...
To Rome with Love
"To Rome with Love" is the kind of Woody Allen comedy that makes people who aren't fans of Woody Allen comedies secure in their assessment, and makes the auteur's fans grimace and say, "Well, OK, disregard that one. Have you seen 'Annie Hall'??"
...
Your Sister’s Sister
"Your Sister's Sister," a funny, small-scale charmer with a trio of dynamite performances, plays out like a smart indie version of "Three's Company," complete with a guy named Jack. This Jack (played by likable everydude Mark Duplass) is a scruffy Se...
Rock of Ages
In the interest of full disclosure, I should say up front that I didn't like most of the songs in "Rock of Ages" when they were new, in the '80s, and there was little reason to think I would find them improved by karaoke performances surrounded by a ...
That’s My Boy
Heaven help me, I thought this time might be different. Yes, the last several films Adam Sandler has starred in have ranged from barely tolerable to intolerably awful, but it's not like he makes movies all by himself. "That's My Boy" was written by D...
Prometheus
Thirty-three years after his “Alien” introduced moviegoers to the terrors of extra-terrestrial life and the horrors of being named “Sigourney,” and 15 years after “Alien: Resurrection” basically ended the franchise (we do not speak of the two “Alien ...
High School
“High School” starts with a viable premise that could evolve into a satisfying stoner comedy, then veers off into something more mundane: a generic high school comedy.
Which is a shame, because that initial scenario is gold. The day after M.I.T.-...
Piranha 3DD
One of the problems with letting adolescent boys make movies is that adolescent boys are notoriously bad at knowing when a joke has run its course. The 15-year-olds who made "Piranha," a 3D boobs-and-blood explosion from two summers ago, got some mil...
Snow White and the Huntsman
The first Snow White adaptation of 2012, "Mirror Mirror," took the sunny, kid-friendly route – and thus couldn’t be more different from the second one, “Snow White and the Huntsman,” which is serious and grown-up. And why shouldn’t it be? We’ve seen ...
Moonrise Kingdom
Wes Anderson’s films have all taken place in a stylized version of the real world – from the Texas plains of “Bottle Rocket” to the meadows and dens of “Fantastic Mr. Fox” – but “Moonrise Kingdom” is the first to be set in an entirely fictional locat...
Oslo, August 31st (Norwegian)
The haunting drama “Oslo, August 31st” opens with a cross-section of people offering their memories of the Norwegian capital city. Most of the reminiscences are pleasant, and they pertain not to Oslo itself but to its people, the friends and family w...
American Animal
"American Animal" is a work of astonishing ego. It was written, directed, and edited by 27-year-old Matt D'Elia, his feature-film debut. D'Elia is also the film's star, though he's never acted before. Oh, and he's naked a lot of the time. A man who w...
Hysteria
In the olden days, "hysteria" was a medical term applied to women (it comes from the Greek for "uterus") to describe everything from anxiety to melancholy to fluid retention. Some of the symptoms were eventually attributed to a lack of sexual satisfa...
Mansome (documentary)
With "Mansome," Morgan Spurlock had the opportunity to make a fascinating documentary about men's grooming habits, and what it means to be "masculine" in the 21st century. Instead, he made a shallow, disposal trifle about beards and waxing: the Peopl...
The Dictator
"The Dictator" is a departure for Sacha Baron Cohen. Oh, don't worry, it's as self-consciously vulgar and politically incorrect as "Borat" and "Bruno," and in many of the same ways, with outrageously bigoted characters providing satire of bigotry. Wh...
A Bag of Hammers
Your complaint that "A Bag of Hammers" is slight, oversimplified, and unrealistic is not unfounded. You have a good point. I hear what you're saying. And I don't care. Because "A Bag of Hammers" is also happy, uncynical, and heartfelt, so gosh-darned...
Dark Shadows
Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are known to be huge fans of two things: each other, and the old ABC daytime soap opera Dark Shadows. The supernatural series ran on weekday afternoons from June 1966 to April 1971, racking up 1,225 episodes and entertainin...
God Bless America
Bobcat Goldthwait makes some barbed and highly accurate observations in "God Bless America," the perverse black comedy about the idiocy of modern culture that he wrote and directed. We have an overdeveloped sensed of entitlement, he says, with no reg...
Sleepless Night (French)
"Sleepless Night" is a workmanlike action thriller from France that's so unfussily entertaining -- and inexpensive to produce -- that Hollywood's urge to remake it will be irresistible. (Indeed, the rights to do so have already been purchased.) Along...
The Avengers
Given the complexity of what it set out to do, "The Avengers" is probably as good as anyone could have expected. I'm not referring to the logistics of working out the actors' schedules or the cost of the special effects (which are not unprecedented),...
The Raven
The problem with "The Raven" is the same problem with a lot of movies: it doesn't star Nicolas Cage.
Set in Baltimore in 1849, this lurid and ludicrous mystery has author Edgar Allan Poe summoned to assist police when a serial killer starts commi...
96 Minutes
"96 Minutes" (which is 94 minutes long, but I'm not complaining) is built like one of those intense dramas where the protagonists get into a bad situation and quickly find everything spiraling out of control. But in this case, it's a moron whose dumb...
Bernie
If Joel and Ethan Coen teamed up with Christopher Guest to make a dark comedy about a murder in a small East Texas town, it might resemble "Bernie," written and directed by Richard Linklater and based on a true story.
Actually, I may have oversold...
Headhunters (Norwegian)
With "Headhunters," a whip-smart and stylishly entertaining entry from Norway, you get three movies in one: first it’s a heist caper; then it’s a domestic drama; and finally it’s a thrilling chase film.
Our hero, Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie), is a ...
Sound of My Voice
"Sound of My Voice" takes place mostly in an unremarkable finished basement in an ordinary Southern California tract home, in which a young woman of average physical appearance named Maggie tells a small group of regular people the most extraordinary...
Whole Lotta Sole
Belfast-born filmmaker Terry George returns to his homeland with "Whole Lotta Sole" (DVD title: "Stand Off"), a light-hearted crime comedy that — oh, what? Did I lose you at “light-hearted crime comedy”? Yes, the man who directed and co-wrote heavy f...
The Five-Year Engagement
The first 30 minutes are funny, and the last five minutes offer a satisfying new resolution to a familiar storyline. But everything else in "The Five-Year Engagement" feels like it's unfolding in real time, a bloated slog that isn't humorous or heart...
Think Like a Man
"Think Like a Man" isn't as grueling as most ensemble comedies about the battle between the sexes -- it's no "He's Just Not That Into You," in other words -- and it's good-natured, occasionally even funny, in the way it reduces men and women into sim...
The Lucky One
There are people (mostly young men) whose knee-jerk response to Zac Efron is that he's a terrible actor whose movies are all terrible -- but who feel that way not because they've seen and disliked anything he's done but because he was in the "High Sc...
