Movie Reviews
Million Dollar Arm
Out of a nozzle on the Disney movie-making machine labeled "inspiring sports dramas" comes "Million Dollar Arm," a rote, emotionally blank lump of fact-based hooey about a sports agent named J.B. Bernstein (Jon Hamm) who saves his career by finding t...
Godzilla (2014)
The day has come! After 60 years, for the first time, we've finally got a Hollywood version of Godzilla. It's amazing nobody ever tried it before, but better late than never, right? Finally! The first American Godzilla movie.
You heard me. THE FIR...
God’s Pocket
In "God's Pocket," the title neighborhood is a Philadelphia subsection populated by complacent, beaten-down people, all of them sinners and losers united by their common flaws. "If you were from here you'd understand" is what the locals say to outsid...
Neighbors
You might expect an R-rated comedy starring Seth Rogen and Zac Efron, directed by the guy who made "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and "The Five-Year Engagement," to be loose and sloppy, like Seth Rogen's torso. But "Neighbors" turns out to be tight and ...
Chef
It's not exactly a deep insight to note that Jon Favreau's sunny, small-scale "Chef" feels like a response to the giant studio projects he's either written or directed in the last several years, which have been full of spectacle (and Iron Men and cow...
The Amazing Spider-Man 2
The new "Spider-Man 2" is here! They added the word "Amazing" to it, but that's really just a marketing tool, like "New & Improved." And yes, the old "Spider-Man 2" is only 9.8 years old and still functions perfectly well. Nonetheless, you'll nee...
Whitewash
It's easy to see what draws an actor like Thomas Haden Church to a film like "Whitewash." Though he works steadily and has done well for himself, the deep-voiced, amusingly off-kilter Church has yet to truly build on the Oscar nomination he earned fo...
Blue Ruin
There isn't much to say on the subject of seeking revenge that isn't covered by the old proverb about digging two graves first, yet we continue to crave movies in which people set out to satisfy the demands of justice by way of vengeance. "Blue Ruin,...
Locke
In the two dozen movies he's made since his first small role in "Black Hawk Down" twelve years ago, Tom Hardy has established himself as a chameleon, disappearing into characters as physically different as the hulking, monstrous Bane in "The Dark Kni...
Brick Mansions
If you're game for a boldly ludicrous action vehicle that doesn't wear out its welcome, you could do a lot worse than "Brick Mansions," a frenetic lark in which a narcotics detective (Paul Walker in his last completed role) and a parkour-practicing v...
In Your Eyes
The last film that beloved geek icon Joss Whedon wrote but didn't direct was "The Cabin in the Woods," an ingenious reshuffling of horror tropes. His latest screenplay, "In Your Eyes," takes a stab at another genre -- the romantic drama -- and gives ...
Transcendence
Like so much of modern technology, "Transcendence" starts out full of excitement and promise before proving to be just another expensive gadget of dubious usefulness. The directorial debut of cinematographer Wally Pfister (he's Christopher Nolan's fa...
Oculus
The first thing you should know about "Oculus," a horror film about a haunted mirror, is that it is much better than a film about a haunted mirror has any right to be. Directed, co-written, and edited by Mike Flanagan, it's an expansion on a well-rec...
Draft Day
After seeing the trailer for "Draft Day" a few months ago, I made the observation that Summit was clearly making no effort to sell the film to people who aren't already interested in the NFL draft (people like me, for example). As if to prove my poin...
Joe
We give Nicolas Cage a lot of ribbing (and rightly so) for his over-the-top performances in nutty movies, but "Joe" is a reminder that he can balance those lunatic sensibilities with real acting when he feels like it. Set deep in rural Texas and base...
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
It was probably inevitable that the new Captain America film, having moved from World War II to the present day, would be more cynical and less rah-rah than its predecessor. "Captain America: The First Avenger" had its flaws, but it also had an exube...
Under the Skin
"Under the Skin" is the story of an alien who comes to Earth, interacts with our kind, and learns what it means to be human. It's like a nightmarish, adults-only version of "E.T.," if E.T. fed on Elliott instead of befriending him.
But that descri...
Hide Your Smiling Faces
The boys in "Hide Your Smiling Faces," an evocative rumination on adolescence by first-time filmmaker Daniel Patrick Carbone, are in the "exploring" phase of youth. Composed of fragments taken from one typical-but-formative summer, the film shows the...
The Raid 2 (Indonesian)
In fall 2011, a splendidly violent martial-arts film called "The Raid" popped up out of Indonesia and blew the heads off film festival audiences at midnight screenings around the world. Dumbly retitled "The Raid: Redemption" for its U.S. release, the...
Sabotage
"Sabotage" is disappointing for a number of reasons, not least of which is its failure to be about sabotage, or to even feature the Beastie Boys song "Sabotage." More importantly, it's gross and off-putting, a luridly "gritty" crime drama populated b...
Divergent
Like most movies, "Divergent" is based on a young-adult novel about a teenage girl living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. In this case, the girl's name is Beatrice (Shailene Woodley), and her society is one in which everyone is divided into five gro...
Cheap Thrills
You could read "Cheap Thrills" as a commentary on the current American socio-economic condition, with the working poor increasingly willing to humiliate themselves in exchange for whatever breadcrumbs are tossed to them by the plutocrats who control ...
Jodorowsky’s Dune (documentary)
Deep in the annals of movie geekdom there is much lore about an aborted adaptation of Frank Herbert's "Dune" that was to have been directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky, the Chilean visionary behind avant-garde cult classics "El Topo" and "The Holy Mounta...
Bad Words
"I'm not that good at a lot of stuff, especially thinking things through," says Guy Trilby at the beginning of "Bad Words." "That's why my plan was so s****y." He's right about that, and the same may apply to Jason Bateman, who plays the character an...
Veronica Mars
Attending your 10-year high school reunion is rarely a good idea, and neither is reuniting the cast of a defunct TV series. But the "Veronica Mars" movie makes the best of both situations, giving fans of the show what they crave while being acce...
Grand Piano
Make no mistake, the premise of "Grand Piano" is 100 percent ridiculous. Do you remember "Phone Booth," where Colin Farrell couldn't hang up or he'd be killed by a sniper? It's like that, only it's concert pianist Elijah Wood who has to keep playing ...
The Grand Budapest Hotel
As the patron saint of cinematic hipsterism, writer-director Wes Anderson is known for making films that, even when set in the present day, have an aura of timelessness about them. The dialogue may be arch and modern, but the diorama-like sets and sy...
Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (Chinese)
In 2005, the highest-grossing foreign film in the U.S. was Stephen Chow's "Kung Fu Hustle," a martial arts action comedy that remains, to this day, one of the looniest and most inventive live-action treats I've seen. It was popular enough to inspire ...
Ernest & Celestine (French)
"Ernest & Celestine" is one of those effortlessly charming cartoons where everything is basically very simple -- it's a story about animals that are supposed to be enemies being friends -- yet filled with whimsical details that make it unique. Fo...
Pompeii
"Pompeii" is like a low-rent "Titanic," with a rich girl and a poor boy falling in love in the shadow of Mt. Vesuvius days before its famous eruption in A.D. 79. You need something to fill the time before the volcano blows its top, though, so to pad ...
Winter’s Tale
Reading what happens in "Winter's Tale" will make you want to see it -- but seeing it would be a mistake, as it's a listless, dull, nonsensical disaster. So proceed with caution. In 1916 New York, a thief (Colin Farrell) evades his angry Irish boss (...
That Awkward Moment
"That Awkward Moment" is like an unfunny, R-rated, bro-oriented "Seinfeld," with three young New York dudes having zany mishaps -- "I think the girl I hooked up with is a prostitute!" "I accidentally used skin-bronzer to pleasure myself!" -- and tryi...
I, Frankenstein
Everyone knows Frankenstein's monster died 200 years ago. What "I, Frankenstein" presupposes is: maybe he didn't? This expensive-looking and deeply absurd genre turkey stars Aaron Eckhart as the handsome, five-foot-eleven, jeans-and-hoodie-wearing cr...
Ride Along
2014 will definitely see movies that are worse than "Ride Along" -- that prophecy will probably be fulfilled before the end of the month, actually -- but it's unlikely to produce any that are more formulaic and uninspired than this flat action comedy...
The Legend of Hercules
With its inept performances, terrible dialogue, and chintzy CGI, Renny Harlin's "The Legend of Hercules" is somehow more cartoonish than Disney's version, which actually was a cartoon. It's more like a daytime soap opera, too. In this telling, Greek ...
August: Osage County
The Westons of Osage County, Okla., where it is currently August, are the kind of family that movies have always thrived on: people you'd never, ever want to have any connection to in real life, but whose vicious squabbles are entertaining to watch f...
47 Ronin
Based on a real Japanese legend stemming from actual events, "47 Ronin" is about a white samurai who helps his cohorts get revenge against a shape-shifting witch. (One suspects the story has been embellished.) I don't know enough about the tale to s...
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
In "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," the title character -- a timid Life magazine photo archivist played by Ben Stiller (who also directed) -- has to wake up from his daydreams and live life to its fullest. And you know what helps him do this? The f...
Grudge Match
"Grudge Match" is based on the premise that Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro played boxers in famous movies a long time ago, and wouldn't it be funny if they played boxers again now that they are old? I readily accept the first part of that prem...
Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
I bow to no one in my fondness for "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy." None of this "it was only so-so at first but got funnier on re-watch" business, either. That's bush league. I loved it immediately and forever, its scattershot story and slap...
The Past (French)
"The Past" is about the past (no surprise there), and how decisions made then can dramatically affect the present and future. But it's also about communication -- verbal and non-verbal, the things we say and don't say, the misunderstandings that can ...
Saving Mr. Banks
"Saving Mr. Banks" tells the heartwarming story of how icy authoress P.L. Travers was charmed by Walt Disney and his merry men into letting them turn her Mary Poppins books into a movie, and how she came to love and appreciate their artistic vision e...
American Hustle
There is indeed something uniquely American about "American Hustle," a loosely fact-based comic drama about chicanery, ambition, corruption, government bureaucracy, and good old-fashioned greed. Nearly everyone in it, from the self-admitted conmen to...
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
There's a terrific action sequence in "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" that involves a river, some barrels, and a lot of orcs and elves. It's visually coherent and exciting, it was shot smoothly, and it's just a pantload of fun. If the rest of t...
Hours
(This review was published in March 2013 during the South By Southwest Film festival.)
All human beings have a talent for one thing or another, and Paul Walker is a human being, so Paul Walker undoubtedly is good at something. But whatever it is, ...
Inside Llewyn Davis
There are two important things to know about the fictional 1961 folk singer at the center of Joel and Ethan Coen's "Inside Llewyn Davis." One, he's quite talented. Not brilliant, not the best of his generation, but well above average, with a clear, h...
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
And now we must walk that delicate line between honoring a biopic's subject and criticizing the biopic. This is particularly difficult right now, in mid-December 2013, because the film is "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom"; its subject died just a matte...
Homefront
In the movies, Jason Statham's "thing" is getting into fistfights with dudes and sometimes shooting them. He's not the only actor in Hollywood who specializes in this, of course, and he's not the best, but he's pretty good at it. What's more, he's re...
Black Nativity
It's the time of year when good intentions count for more than they usually do, when a nice gesture is appreciated even if it's clumsy and maybe accidentally pokes you in the eye. That's why I'm OK with "Black Nativity," a heart-on-its-sleeve Christm...
Philomena
A sweet old woman searches for her long-lost son with the assistance of a cynical freelance journalist who's hungry for a meaty human interest story. That one-sentence description of "Philomena" is accurate, but it barely scratches the surface of the...
Delivery Man
In a way, "Delivery Man" is an awe-inspiring achievement: a movie that is 100% disconnected from reality, without a single plausible moment or believable character. And I'm not even talking about the premise, which is that an irresponsible man's many...
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Suzanne Collins' "Hunger Games" trilogy is a great read if you're into that sort of thing (reading), and it's shrewdly constructed. The first book, memorably adapted last year into a star-making vehicle for Jennifer Lawrence, focuses on the Hunger Ga...
The Best Man Holiday
Like many things you’ll be consuming in cinemas and at your dinner table over the next several weeks, “The Best Man Holiday” is warm, mushy, and underdone, yet undeniably made with love. Written and directed by Malcolm D. Lee (a sequel to his minor 1...
Charlie Countryman
Charlie Countryman is the kind of character Shia LaBeouf should keep playing, and "Charlie Countryman" is the sort of movie he should keep making, even if this particular one isn't very good. It suits The Beef because it's free-spirited and unconvent...
Go for Sisters
Few filmmakers are more legitimately "independent" than John Sayles, who has now written and directed 18 features since 1979 ("Return of the Secaucus Seven") without studio backing. His latest, the affable character drama "Go for Sisters," while not ...
Thor: The Dark World
I liked the first "Thor" movie, released way back in 2011, probably in part because I'd never read a Thor comic book and didn't have any investment in the character or the mythology (Marvel, not Norse). The film was a little light on action, but I di...
Reaching for the Moon
The American poet Elizabeth Bishop was known to be a reserved, introspective woman, and "Reaching for the Moon," a movie about her 15-year sojourn in Brazil, is as staid and polite as the lady herself. In fact, one is tempted to say the film is TOO p...
About Time
I'll describe how wonderful "About Time" is by telling you what it's not. It's a time-travel movie, but with an absolute minimum of science-fiction, paradoxes, and butterfly effects. It's a romantic comedy, but only for the first hour or so, and not ...
The Broken Circle Breakdown (Flemish)
The familiar Christian hymn "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" asks rhetorically whether we'll see our loved ones in the afterlife. The implied answer is that of course we will: the family circle will not be broken. But that question is at the heart of "...
Last Vegas
The best that can be said for "Last Vegas" -- a comedy about four old men cutting loose in Sin City, "Hangover"-style -- is that it's not as bad as it sounds, with only the bare minimum of jokes about Viagra and incontinence.
The quartet of lifelo...
Ender’s Game
Easily the most popular book ever written about naked young boys playing laser tag in space, Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game" has been a sci-fi mainstay since its first publication in 1985. Since it took 28 years to get it to the big screen, the fac...
Blue Is the Warmest Color (French)
There probably isn’t anyone who’s heard of “Blue Is the Warmest Color” who hasn’t also heard that it contains a graphic eight-minute lesbian sex scene. At this point, it might as well be part of the title. “Blue Is the Warmest Color: The 8-Minute Les...
The Counselor
A few Cormac McCarthy novels been turned into movies ("No Country for Old Men" and "The Road," notably), but "The Counselor" is the first time he's written something directly for the screen. Watching the film, I couldn't help but think it would work ...
Haunter
Time is a fluid thing in the atmospheric "Haunter," but it's set mainly in 1985. It's the day before Lisa's 16th birthday. It has been for a while. Lisa (Abigail Breslin) and her wholesomely plain family -- mother (Michelle Nolden), father (Peter Out...
Carrie
It's been 37 years since Brian De Palma turned Stephen King's first published novel, "Carrie," into a bloody camp classic, more than enough time for the idea of a remake to become palatable (not to mention financially appealing). And its central elem...
Escape Plan
"Escape Plan" succeeds where the "Expendables" movies have failed because it doesn't just bring iconic '80s action stars together, it actually gives them something to do. Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, playing smarter-than-they-look mu...
All Is Lost
One of the first things Robert Redford says in "All Is Lost" -- and it's also one of the last things he says -- is "I'm sorry." His character, whose name we never learn, is in a damaged boat on the open sea, writing a note to his loved ones that he h...
12 Years a Slave
There are three devastating, longer-than-average shots in "12 Years a Slave" that encapsulate the film's greatness, both as a movie and as cultural commentary. Two of them, though they depict abject cruelty, may seem otherwise unremarkable at first g...
Kill Your Darlings
"On the Road," "Howl," "Big Sur" -- for some of us, the movies about Beat poets we've seen in the last five years outnumber the Beat poems we've read in our lives. But the latest, "Kill Your Darlings," covers a lesser-known aspect of the Beat Generat...
Zero Charisma
Movies about slovenly man-children in a state of permanent adolescence have thrived in the last decade, probably due to the growing number of slovenly man-children in the audience and in Hollywood. But few of these comedies (they're almost always com...
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
Jonathan Levine has directed three movies — “The Wackness,” “50/50,” and “Warm Bodies” — in the seven years since his first one, “All the Boys Love Mandy Lane,” played at a handful of festivals and then got stuck in a purgatory of shifting ownerships...
Romeo & Juliet (2013)
I know it's pointless to call a movie "unnecessary." Strictly speaking, all movies (and other works of art) are "unnecessary" in the sense that we don't need them to survive. But egads, the new version of "Romeo & Juliet" sure is unnecessary. Nev...
Escape from Tomorrow
Nothing that happens in "Escape from Tomorrow" is half as intriguing as what happened behind the scenes. That's not for lack of trying, mind you -- what happens onscreen is pretty weird, too -- but it's hard to top the bizarre journey that first-time...
Argento’s Dracula
You can usually disregard the possessive parts of movie titles like "Dr. Seuss' The Lorax" and "Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail" as the fulfillment of contractual obligations, not as necessary components of the actual title. (I don't care what the p...
Gravity
Seeing "Gravity" is the closest most of us will ever come to knowing what it's like to be in outer space. In fact, after seeing "Gravity," I hope I never do experience space firsthand. That place is terrifying. There's no air! Or gravity! You break f...
A.C.O.D.
Half of all marriages end in divorce, but we're told that the one in "A.C.O.D." was "particularly sh***y." As evidence, the film presents camcorder footage from the main character's now-infamous 9th birthday party, where his parents' screaming match ...
Don Jon
Joseph Gordon-Levitt made plenty of good decisions with his directorial debut, not least of which was casting Scarlett Johansson as his own love interest. (Smart!) But his shrewdest choice came after the film's Sundance premiere, when he changed the ...
A Single Shot
There are actually three shots fired at the beginning of "A Single Shot." All three come from the rifle of John Moon (played by Sam Rockwell) and are aimed at a deer in the forlorn, foggy hills of West Virginia (played by Vancouver). But the shot tha...
Prisoners
Keller Dover, who has the second goofiest name in "Prisoners," is a devout family man who recites the Lord's Prayer before shooting a deer in the woods near his Pennsylvania home on Thanksgiving morning. We are reminded more than once that he wears a...
C.O.G.
No modern writer I'm aware of is better at telling bizarre, funny personal anecdotes than David Sedaris. The best of his essays, collected in such books as "Barrel Fever," "Me Talk Pretty One Day," and "Holidays on Ice," focus on things that really h...
Goldberg & Eisenberg (Hebrew)
It's too soon to tell whether Oren Carmi is Israel's answer to the Coen brothers, whom he lists among his influences, but his debut feature, the darkly comic "Goldberg & Eisenberg," shows promise. I get the impression that a grim sense of humor i...
Detektiv Downs (Norwegian)
A lot of movies about mentally disabled private investigators are gimmicky and insensitive, but not "Detektiv Downs"! This is surely the most warm-hearted and clever Norwegian movie about a detective with Down syndrome that I have ever seen.
What...
Enough Said
Waiting till 2013 to give Julia Louis-Dreyfus a starring role in a movie was inexcusable, but it's a comfort to know that when it finally happened, it was something as wholeheartedly charming as "Enough Said." This zippy, warm-and-cuddly comedy for g...
Blue Caprice
"Blue Caprice" is a loosely fictionalized account of the "Beltway sniper" attacks that killed 10 people and terrorized the Washington, D.C., metro area for three weeks in 2002. Except the film's not about the attacks themselves: it's about the killer...
Riddick
No one expected there to be even one sequel to "The Fast & the Furious," let alone five of them (so far). Even fewer people thought there'd be a follow-up to "Pitch Black," the 2000 sci-fi thriller about people stuck on a planet with carnivorous ...
Getaway
There's one amazing shot in "Getaway." If you see the movie -- which you shouldn't, because it's stupid and boring -- you'll know the shot I mean because it's the only shot in the whole film that lasts longer than half a second. It's an extended take...
Passion
Oh, Brian De Palma. What a special, trashy, highly competent auteur you are! No one makes lurid erotic thrillers with more consistency or panache than this guy. Some De Palma films are bad and some are good, but what they all have in common is that a...
Closed Circuit
"Closed Circuit" starts out like it's going to be a canny thriller about British lawyers uncovering the truth about a London terrorist attack, perhaps using the surveillance footage emphasized in the film's opening moments and suggested by the title....
You’re Next
One of the clever things about "You're Next" is the way it starts out making you think it's not going to be clever at all. The prologue is a standard exercise in cinematic bloodshed, and it's followed by a married couple arriving at their isolated va...
Drinking Buddies
Joe Swanberg's career as a filmmaker has gone through several phases, all without his name being known to more than a tiny fraction of the movie-going public. The inadvertent and unwilling godfather of the "Mumblecore" sub-genre (in which listless tw...
The World’s End
My favorite thing about the Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg comedies -- "Shaun of the Dead," "Hot Fuzz," and now "The World's End" -- is how carefully constructed they are. Throwaway lines are in short supply; filler dialogue is almost non-existent. Everythi...
Short Term 12
A tender, quiet film like "Short Term 12," so full of humanity and compassion and populated by rich characters, is a soothing balm after a steady diet of raucous, bombastic fare. Even if you tend to seek out thoughtful independent dramas over studio ...
Austenland
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single lady who obsesses over the works of Jane Austen -- particularly "Pride and Prejudice," and specifically the 1995 miniseries version with Colin Firth -- will find her real-life boyfriends lacking wh...
The Butler
What "The Butler" tries to accomplish is so noble and ambitious that it almost doesn't matter how clumsily maudlin it ends up being, how over-earnest and sanctimonious it can be. It's heartening that movies on this subject are being made at all; why ...
Kick-Ass 2
The first "Kick-Ass" movie ended on the usual superhero note: it set things up for a sequel. Ordinary high-schooler Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) had established himself as masked crusader Kick-Ass, with lethal tween Mindy Macready (Chloe Grac...
Paranoia
I wouldn't say corporate espionage is automatically a dull subject for a dramatic thriller, but in "Paranoia," Liam Hemsworth sure does his best to make it seem that way.
The Australian lunkhead plays Adam, a Brooklyn tech-industry striver with M...
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints
"This was in Texas," reads the title card at the beginning of "Ain't Them Bodies Saints." It sounds like the start of an old yarn, and the film, an unadorned, sepia-toned mood piece, has an ambling pace to it. As Southern outlaws, the lovers at the c...
Prince Avalanche
Many reviews of "Your Highness" and "The Sitter," two of the more pitiful comedies of 2011, featured concerned inquiries as to what (and in some cases what THE HELL) had happened to those films' director, David Gordon Green. His first four features -...
Elysium
The distressingly plausible premise of "Elysium" is that in the future, after Earth has become a polluted, overcrowded nightmare, the rich have built an idyllic colony for themselves on an orbiting space station, leaving the rest of us to fend for ou...
Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
Having missed 2010's "Percy Jackson & the Lightning Thief" because of reasons, and then never catching up with it due to factors, I was at a disadvantage when it came time for "Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters." But I was also free of preconceived ...
