Category: The Twenty-First Century
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The Angriest Man In Brooklyn [2014] ★½
Robin Williams is the angriest man in Brooklyn. And I’m the angriest man in the theater. This movie stinks. Rating: 1.5/4
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Blended [2014] ★★
“Blended” rolls unapologetically off the Adam Sandler assembly line. It’s another farce high on silliness, sentiment, sex jokes, toilet jokes and a love for grossout gags that is too sincere to be faked. Say what you will about him, and to most people, Sandler is the Ed Wood of comedy. He’s a 48 year old…
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Chef [2014] ★★★
“Chef”, featuring all humans all the time, is the kind of comedy you root for even when you know it has nowhere else to go. It’s refreshing to see writer/director Jon Favreau go back to his indie roots, following a series of big Hollywood blockbusters like “Iron Man” and “Cowboys & Aliens”. He also plays…
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Maleficent [2014] ★★
Few filmmakers can frame a film with the visionary flair of Oscar winner Robert Stromberg, who worked on the amazing “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “The Hunger Games”. As a result, “Maleficent” (Angelina Jolie’s major comeback since 2010’s “The Tourist”)- a spin on Sleeping Beauty for audiences who really think they need another one- offers sets, costumes…
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Muppets Most Wanted [2014] ★★½
The 2011 movie was one of the best surprises of the year and a huge success at the box office. “Muppets Most Wanted”, while not as good as its predecessor, is still fun to watch. It reunites the team that made the first one so successful (without Jason Segel though and that’s a shame), including…
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Joe [2014] ★★★
“Joe” is quite simply Nicolas Cage’s best movie in years. It’s a reminder of what a good actor he can be and that’s something we haven’t seen onscreen in a very long time. Director David Gordon Green returns to his indie roots after a series of Hollywood disappointments (“Your Highness”, “The Sitter”) with an intriguing…
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Only Lovers Left Alive [2014] ★★
Jim Jarmusch (“Mystery Train”, “Dead Man”) is a smart filmmaker, and his new movie is so original, that I wish I liked it more. I was fascinated by its premise at first, about two vampires (Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton) who’s been in love for centuries. For reasons unexplained, they now live in different parts…
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X-Men: Days Of Future Past [2014] ★★★½
“X-Men: Days of Future Past” is everything a comic book movie could hope to be: smart, original, exciting and funny. It is vastly superior to all the previous installments, and not just because it draws on one of the most admired stories in the series. Screenwriter Simon Kinberg has used the time travel concept as…
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Grace Of Monaco [2014] ★½
Shush. Do you hear that? That’s Grace Kelly turning in her grave. Kelly, a former actress turned Princess, is one of the most iconic women of the 20th Century, if not the greatest. But telling her story is no easy achievement. Enter French director Olivier Dahan, who brought visionary zest to Edith Piaf in 2007’s…
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Godzilla [2014] ★★½
Now that the fanboy hype has cleared (or has it?), we can see “Godzilla” for what it truly is: borrowed inspiration coupled with impressive CGI, all in the service of a ballsy idea that a monster movie could maybe, just maybe, have a soul. As it turns out, Godzilla’s virtues are mainly mechanical, except for…
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In The Blood [2014] ★★
If you like brainless action thrillers, “In The Blood” is probably the movie for you. It stars Gina Carano (who made a strong impression in Steven Soderbergh’s “Haywire”) as a woman who sets off to take down the men who kidnapped her husband during their Caribbean honeymoon. The plot may be silly, but there’s no…
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Walk Of Shame [2014]
Toss this ugly-ass crap into the scum bucket, along with the other multiplex garbage (I’m talking to you “The Other Woman“), and see a film that gets it right (I’m talking “The Grand Budapest Hotel“). Elizabeth Banks adds a career crushing notch to her career by playing a news reporter who finds herself without a…
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Bad Neighbors [2014] ★★
What can I say about a movie that made me want to slap everyone in the face? “Bad Neighbors” is so shallow, self-satisfied and downright silly that I hesitate to discuss it. It has none of the qualities of director Nicholas Stoller’s debut feature, “Forgetting Sarah Marhall”, and it’s a long way from Seth Rogen’s…
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The Railway Man [2014] ★★½
Colin Firth is a fine actor. So casting him as Eric Lomax, a British Army officer who was tormented as a prisoner of war at a Japanese labor camp during World War II, is just plain inspired. The film opens in 1980, decades after the war. Lomax is about to marry Patti (Nicole Kidman), whom…
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The Amazing Spider-Man 2 [2014] ★★½
Spidey fans went crazy when Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios announced that they were rebooting the series, just five years after Sam Raimi’s “Spider Man 3” hit theaters back in 2007. As a result, the first “Amazing Spider-Man” received mixed reviews by critics and fans upon release; some people praised Andrew Garfield’s performance while others…
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The Grand Budapest Hotel [2014] ★★★★
The dumb rap against the brilliant Wes Anderson is that his movies (From “Rushmore” to “Moonrise Kingdom”) all hit on similar themes and techniques. Damn him. And damn Scorsese and his obsession with gangsters. And what’s with Tarantino and violence? My point is, an artist can spend a lifetime developing personal themes and deepening their…
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The Other Woman [2014]
You’ve seen it all before. Eight years ago actually, in “John Tucker Must Die”, in which a high school newbie helped three popular girls exact revenge on the man who lied and cheated on them. In “The Other Woman”, directed by Nick Cassavetes, it’s more of the stupid same. I’ve always liked Cameron Diaz, who…
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Transcendence [2014]
For a variety of reasons, I had low expectations for this Sci-Fi movie starring Johnny Depp, Morgan Freeman, Rebecca Hall and Paul Bettany. As it turns out, the film was worse than I expected. Much much worse. Last month I saw “Divergent”. I thought the problem with that film was that it lost most of…
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Oculus [2014] ★★
Here’s a hit and miss horror film that doesn’t live up to its potential. Why? Because director Mike Flanagan wastes a solid premise with repetitive cliché. Damn shame, I really wanted to like this one. The setup is achingly familiar: when brother/sister Tim (Brendon Thwaites) and Kaylie (Karen Gillan) Russell were kids, their father murdered their…
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Nurse 3-D [2013]
This horror show from director Douglas Aarniokoski will be heaven for devotees of B slasher flicks and zero star hell for pretty much everyone else. Paz De La Huerta (“Boardwalk Empire”) plays a homicidal nurse who preys on cheating men by night with her syringe and scalpel (how original!). Then she meets Danni, a recent…
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