Category: The Twenty-First Century
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White House Down [2013] ★★
Another action movie featuring the president of the United States? Seriously? From the peak of “Air Force One” to the low of “Olympus Has Fallen” (sorry about that), we’ve seen it all. The makers of “White House Down” tell us we haven’t seen the version starring Channing Tatum as a wannabe secret agent who tries…
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The Company You Keep [2013] ★★½
Dramas like “The Company you Keep” usually hold few surprises. But it’s always a pleasure to see Robert Redford back on screen. He also directs the likes of Shia LaBeouf, Susan Sarandon, Terrence Howard, Nick Nolte, Stanley Tucci, Brendan Gleeson, Chris Cooper and Richard Jenkins (what a cast!). The movie opens with Sarandon turning herself in…
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Spring Breakers [2013] ★★
How you feel about “Spring Breakers” will have a lot to do with your age and gender. If I were a hormonally charged 16-year-old boy, I might think it was a wish-fulfillment movie featuring lots of good-looking naked girls. Director Harmony Korine managed to convince a couple of Disney stars (ha!) to wear bikinis for 90 minutes…
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The Purge [2013] ★★
Everybody wants to make an original horror movie these days. If anyone could reinvigorate the concept, it’s James DeMonaco (“The Negotiator”) and that’s what this writer/director tries to do in “The Purge”. And he almost pulls it off with his nifty premise: in 2022, and once a year, all crime is legalized for a period of…
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World War Z [2013] ★★★
I’m a bit late coming to this movie (blame it on surgery), but having heard good buzz I couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into it. I can’t call “World War Z” a feel good movie. In fact, you won’t want to be feeling anything after seeing this Zombie apocalypse. But you won’t be able…
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The Heat [2013] ★★½
Think of “The Heat” as the female version of “The Other Guys”. Kick it up a notch by casting Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy (hilarious in “Bridesmaids”), spice with action and snappy jokes then sit back and laugh your ass off. I did and I’m not afraid to admit it. I’m tempted to call it my…
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Stoker [2013] ★★★
If you’re not interested in what Wentworth Miller (“Prison Break”) and director Chan Wook Park (“Oldboy”) are cooking up, you’re missing out on one of the weirdest movies of the year. “Stoker” is also an ode to Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt”, in which a young girl bonds with her serial killer uncle (yikes!). The title…
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Monsters University [2013] ★★★
Not every sequel (or prequel) works. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why director Dan Scanlon and his colleagues at Pixar put so much effort into “Monsters University, to validate its existence. It’s that love for animated films, along with creativity and seemingly boundless imagination, that makes this prequel so good. The movie’s strongest asset is definitely…
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The Last Exorcism Part II [2013]
The movie is called “The last Exorcism part II” and it’s a sequel to a mediocre 2010 movie of the same name. Were you really expecting something good? Didn’t think so. The story this time around focuses on Nell (the girl who was possessed in the first film) who is trying to rebuild her life…
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Arthur Newman [2012] ★★½
Colin Firth and Emily Blunt play Americans in this weird little movie from director Dante Ariola. “Arthur Newman” tells the story of one Wallace Avery (Firth as good as always), a man tired of his own existence who plans to fake his own death in order to change his identity. His new name (yep you guessed…
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Man Of Steel [2013] ★★★
Take a hike Brandon Routh, there’s a new Superman in town, and he’s younger, fiercer and stronger than ever before. Producer Christopher Nolan, who wrote the script with David Goyer, shows us a Superman caught in the act of inventing himself. The Man of Steel that Henry Cavill plays so potently in this fresh take is still discovering…
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The Internship [2013] ★★½
Sometimes a shamelessly silly comedy is all you want out of life. “The Internship” more than fills the bill. Is it cheesy? Heck yes. Is it predictable? You bet it is. But it’s also entertaining and really funny at times. Cheers to Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, who gave us “Wedding Crashers” aka one of the funniest films…
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Bullet To The Head [2013] and The Last Stand [2013] ★½
1- Bullet to the Head: This film is Sylvester Stallone’s way of saying “I make crappy movies but you pay to see them anyway”. He plays a hitman who teams up with a…wait for it… detective (Sung Kang from “Fast and Furious”) in order to bring down a common enemy. Can you guess what happens next? But…
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Now You See Me [2013] ★★
Ain’t that a kick in the head: “Now You See Me” has the coolest cast in town and a solid premise yet halfway through the film my mind started to wander. Instead of being pulled into the story I felt myself drifting away from it. The movie starts out promisingly enough though. In a companion piece to “Ocean’s…
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After Earth [2013] ★★
90 minutes may feel like 90 days in this slow and sometimes painfully boring post-apocalyptic movie from director M. Night Shyamalan, the perpetrator of such terrible films as “Lady in the Water”, “The Happening” and (oh dear Lord) “The Last Airbender”. In “After Earth”, Will Smith plays Cypher, the leader of Nova Prime, the planet…
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Epic [2013] ★★★
I said this once and I’ll say it again: I don’t ask a lot from animated features. As long as they’re entertaining, colorful and funny, I’m hooked. Chris Wedge, the director who brought us “Ice Age” and “Robots” has done it again with “Epic”. Here is an enjoyable, good-looking, funny animated feature destined to capture…
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The Hangover Part III [2013] ★½
Oh geez I really wanted to like this one. Instead, I left “The Hangover Part III” feeling dazed and cheated. So what the heck happened? Or to paraphrase Mr. Chow, “I want answers, motherfuckers!” How could such a good comedy degenerate into a sloppy, unfunny one? The first “Hangover” was one of the funniest films…
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Fast & Furious 6 [2013] ★★
The Fast and the Furious franchise ran out of gas halfway into “Tokyo Drift”. Yet the filmmakers decided to revive it by bringing back the original cast in 2009. Not a bad idea, especially if you’ve seen “Fast Five” (which remains my favorite so far). So what’s new here? Nothing much. But if you care about…
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Movie 43 [2013]
Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Naomi Watts, Liev Schreiber, Anna Faris, Kieran Culkin, Emma Stone, Richard Gere, Kate Bosworth, Justin Long, Jason Sudeikis, Uma Thurman, Kristen Bell, Christopher “McLovin” Mintz- Plasse, Chloe Moretz, Gerard Butler, Sean William Scott, Johnny Knoxville, Halle Berry, Terrence Howard, Dennis Quaid, Greg Kinnear, Elizabeth Banks, Josh Duhamel and Seth McFarlane all…
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Emperor [2012] ★★½
Interesting slice of World War II history has Tommy Lee Jones and Matthew Fox (“Lost”, “Vantage Point”) assigned to help rebuild Japan after the war and bring Emperor Hirohito (Takata rô Kataoka) to trial for war crimes. It’s a minor picture for sure, with a great performance by Jones, who is definitely the best thing in…
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