Category: The Twenty-First Century
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Love And Honor [2013]
Dreadful movie set during the Vietnam War and starring Liam Hemsworth (“The Hunger Games”) and Austin Stowell as two soldiers who decide to return to America while on leave. Stowell wants to see the girl who dumped him before he shipped out, while Hemsworth finds himself connecting with a pretty “journalist” (Teresa Palmer). I hate the…
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Wadjda [2012] ★★★½
Can I tell you how thrilled I am that I got to see this movie? Part of the response comes from the excitement of discovery: a writer-director from Saudi Arabia,Haifaa Al Mansour, making her feature debut, and creating a movie that is both entertaining and thought provoking. The hype-meisters of moviedom have made it difficult to use words…
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Jack The Giant Slayer [2013] ★★½
“Jack the Giant Slayer” is far from the disaster it’s been made out to be in some circles…nor is it a wonderful achievement. It has enough visual effects and production values for three movies, but not enough story material, which is one of its problems. But it does provide vigorous, eye-filling entertainment, and paves the way…
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Oz The Great And Powerful [2013] ★★★
How you react to this film will have a lot to do with your expectations. I didn’t expect a work of genius. In fact, I approached it with caution, worried that Sam Raimi’s touch layered on top of L. Frank Baum’s surreal material would create a kind of overkill. I’m happy to report that I was pleasantly surprised.…
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Identity Thief [2013] ★★
I wouldn’t call “Identity Thief” a great comedy, but I had a lot of fun watching Melissa McCarthy, who effortlessly commands the screen and proves once again that she’s a real comedian. As an employee at a financial business in Denver, Jason Bateman is cast in the role of straight man, and while he’s good, the main reason…
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Side Effects [2013] ★★★
The most satisfying movie of the year so far is a thriller from Oscar winner Steven Soderbergh who says this is the last film he plans to direct. Damn shame. “Side Effects” is both clever and entertaining with surprises you don’t see coming (I mean it). Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns, who previously worked together…
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Mama [2013] ★★½
It has a spooky atmosphere, a wicked story and a solid performance by Jessica Chastain as a woman who is trying to solve the mystery of how her boyfriend’s nieces survived in the wilderness for five years and why they still seem to be haunted by a menacing ghost they call “Mama.” No fair revealing more…
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Safe Haven [2013] ★★
People crave romantic movies, be they dramatic or funny (the box-office numbers prove it) and novelist Nicholas Sparks has provided the raw material for a number of such films including “Dear John”, “The Lucky One”, and most successfully, “The Notebook”. I think it’s fair to say that moviegoers know what to expect when they see one of these…
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The Master [2012] ★★★½
“The Master” makes it six-for-six for writer and director Paul Thomas Anderson, who follows “Hard Eight”, “Boogie Nights”, “Magnolia”, “Punch Drunk Love” and “There Will Be Blood” with his most ardent and ambitious movie yet. Anderson keeps a tight lid on his work so that audiences can approach his character-based dramas with a sense of discovery. Fair…
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Broken City [2013] ★★
“Broken City” should have and could have been a lot better. I mean just the idea of Mark Wahlberg playing a cop who is used then discarded by the mayor (Russell Crowe) sounds like a dream popcorn movie. But the movie, directed by Allen Hughes (“From Hell”, “The Book of Eli”) goes down in a sea…
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A Good Day To Die Hard [2013] ★★½
It’s easy to joke about Bruce Willis, now past 55, returning for a fifth chapter in the “Die Hard” series. It’s been over 20 years since the first one and 5 years since the last. Shouldn’t Willis be retired by now? OK, I said the jokes were easy. But you know what? Willis gets the last…
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The Paperboy [2012] ★½
Matthew McConaughey rises once again above the material as Miami Times reporter Ward Jansen who returns home to investigate the case of Hillary Van Wetter (a creepy John Cusack ), a prisoner about to be executed for killing a cop. Charlotte Bless (Kidman), a weird blonde with a hots for men on death row thinks Hillary is…
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Seven Psychopaths [2012] ★★★
I don’t care how much you think director Martin McDonagh is working you over with “Seven Psychopaths”, his first movie since 2008’s “In Bruges” (terrific movie by the way). And I don’t care how many annoying film critics complain that McDonagh doesn’t yet know his way around a camera. “Seven Psychopaths” is literate, lively cinema. A bit…
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Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters [2013] ★½
Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton hunt and kill witches. That’s it for subtext in this formula January flick. Were you expecting more? Didn’t think so. It’s obvious that Norwegian writer-director Tommy Wirkola has no faith in his story, so in order to keep goosing the audience, he throws in one witch after the other, explodes heads and…
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Warm Bodies [2013] ★★½
Comparing “Warm Bodies” to “Twilight” doesn’t do this movie justice. Unlike “Twilight”, this is a larger-than-life zombie yarn with special effects and a sense of humor. It isn’t my favorite kind of entertainment, but writer-director Jonathan Levine (who won us over with his 2011 movie “50/50”) has brought an appealing cast to the story adapted from Isaac…
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Killing Them Softly [2012] ★★
I’m a bit late reviewing this movie, but having seen it a while ago I can safely say that it was one of the most disappointing films of 2012. It isn’t a requirement that you like a movie’s central characters, but it usually helps develop rooting interest. That’s one reason “Killing Them Softly” comes up short: it’s…
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The Sessions [2012] ★★★
John Hawkes and Helen Hunt are worth the price of admission to “The Sessions” all by themselves, as far as I’m concerned. That the film is so smart and entertaining is icing on the cake. Many moviegoers are most comfortable with cookie-cutter films that give them what they expect. I didn’t know what to anticipate from “The Sessions“, but…
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Texas Chainsaw 3D [2013]
The worst movie of this very new year has a good chance to retain the title for all of 2013. This putridly written, directed and acted movie claims to be the “real” sequel to the 1974 original “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. So fucking what? The horror begins with the slaughter of the infamously cannibalistic Sawyer clan, but of…
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Amour [2012] ★★★½
What can you say about a film that is so vividly real, and so intense, that it holds you spellbound for two hours, without letup? “Amour” would be superior filmmaking under any circumstances. With rare subtlety and transforming art, the remarkable writer-director Michael Haneke takes us into the emotional heart of an old french couple. Both are…
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