Category: crime
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The Family [2013] ★★
Robert DeNiro plays a mobster in “The Family”, the new movie from director Luc Besson (“The Professional”, “La Femme Nikita”). Last time he played the role of a mob was…10 minutes ago? Anyway he and his family are put in the witness protection program in Normandy (France, just in case), after daddy DeNiro ratted out…
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Empire State [2013]
Welcome to Dwayne Johnson’s 100th movie of the year (I’m not really sure about the number but who’s counting?). He plays a cop who tries to stop a couple of morons (that would be the dreadful Liam Hemsworth and Michael Angarano) from robbing an armored car company. That’s it for plot in this truly awful movie.…
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Prisoners [2013] ★★★½
Other films this year will have to try hard to match the explosive power and masterful direction of Denis Villeneuve’s “Prisoners”. His film sneaks up, messes with you head and leaves you breathless. Allow it. Yet on the surface, the plot sounds like an ordinary police procedural: Keller Dover’s (Hugh Jackman) six-year-old daughter, Anna, is missing,…
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Welcome To The Punch [2013] ★½
“Welcome to the Punch” is a stinker from start to finish. That’s all you need to know. Rating: 1.5/4
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The Frozen Ground [2013] ★★
Confession: I was a huge Nicolas Cage fan back in the 90’s and early 2000’s. “Face- Off”, “The Rock”, “Matchstick Men” and “Lord Of War” were among his best work. So what happened? “The Wicker Man”, “Ghost Rider”, “Season of the Witch”, “Stolen” and “Trespass” were just God-awful movies, we assumed that he’s only in…
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Passion [2013] ★★
What happens when you mess with a very mean Rachel McAdams? See “Passion”, the new movie from Brian De Palma and find out. I didn’t believe a word of it. But with Noomi Rapace (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” trilogy) as Isabelle, an ambitious creative director working for bossy Christine (McAdams), there’s enough erotic…
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Only God Forgives [2013] ★½
“Only God Forgives” is perhaps the first Ryan Gosling movie one can honestly describe as boring. Yet it arrives with its credentials of cool all set: A stylish retro-noir look courtesy of Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn (who directed the unforgettable “Drive“) and Gosling again in the lead with badass attitude leftover from “Drive” and “The…
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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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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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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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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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Gangster Squad [2013] ★★½
Expectations are murder. With a dynamite cast (do Sean Penn and Josh Brolin ever fuck up?), and director Ruben Fleischer who inspired worship for “Zombieland”, you assume a new classic. What you get is an ambitious try. Yet “Gangster Squad” pulls the magician’s trick of distraction, offering enough superficial entertainment value with good use of locations, charismatic actors,…
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Jack Reacher [2012] ★★★
Call it cheesy, call it bullshit, call it whatever you want, but gotta admit: “Jack Reacher” is one heck of a vehicle for its leading star Tom Cruise, and he makes the most out of it. I couldn’t care less about it when I first saw the trailer and some folks I spoke to told…
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Killer Joe [2012] ★★
Matthew McConaughey is perfectly cast as a sadistic dallas cop who works as a hit man in “Killer Joe”, but at some point I found myself curiously disengaged from this story and didn’t care what happened to everyone involved in it. That’s a damn shame, because McConaughey, who delivered such a daring performance in “Magic…
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Lawless [2012] ★★★
Tom Hardy starring in this fact based story about The Bondurant brothers alongside Shia LaBeouf , Jessica Chastain and Guy Pearce sounds like Oscar Bait. It isn’t. And the sooner you accept it, the more fun you’ll have at this satisfying crime drama. To be completely honest, there’s no reason “Lawless” should play as well as it does; it’s…
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Bernie [2012] ★★★
Jack Black’s presence generally makes any movie worth seeing, and this is no exception. Want more proof? “The School Of Rock”, “Be Kind Rewind” and “Tenacious D”. In “Bernie”, a strange movie directed by Richard Linklater , Black plays a beloved mortician. I say beloved because he is so good at what he does, and everyone…
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The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo [2011] ★★★½
The american version of “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” is gripping and unusual, even if you’ve seen the Swedish film that inspired it, which in turn was based on a novel by Stieg Larson. If you did catch that striking Swedish import two years ago, you should be familiar with the story by now.…
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Vertigo [1958] ★★★★
One of the most interesting things about this movie is the fact that it was a flop at the time of its release. Hitchcock instantly blamed James Stewart, saying he was “too old to attract audiences anymore”. The two never worked together again, eventhough Stewart was the original choice for the role of Roger Thornhill in…
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