Category: GENRE
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Parental Guidance [2012] ★★
OK family movie with predictable slapstick moments is strengthened by Billy Crystal and Bette Midler’s performances as grandparents who find themselves having to take care of their three grandkids when their parents (Marisa Tomei and Tom Everett Scott) go away for work. Works better if you’ve never seen “Cheaper by the Dozen”, “Daddy Day Care”,…
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Les Misérables [2012] ★★★
Tom Hooper’s flawed but frequently dazzling “Les Misérables” is a hot-blooded musical fantasia full of songs, songs and more songs. There’s barely any spoken dialogue so basically everyone sings for nearly three hours without giving us a chance to take a deep breath! If this isn’t your cup of tea, now’s your chance to run for the…
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Dredd [2012] ★★½
Since Sylvester Stallone screwed up the the comic-book character with his 1995 screen version. I dreaded the idea of another “Dredd” movie. Surprise. This version starring Karl Urban is not half bad. The first movie was pure cheese, and it had Rob Schneider in it (yes it was that bad). Here, things get much darker as Dredd…
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Cloud Atlas [2012] ★★½
“Cloud Atlas” is a movie that offers a grandiose and a disappointing experience at the same time. It flirts with greatness and has much to admire, including exceptional performances from Tom Hanks, Jim Broadbent and Hugo Weaving. Their work is reason enough to recommend the film, yet when the movie ended I didn’t know what to make of…
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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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The Impossible [2012] ★★★
For a film that is alternately emotional, “The Impossible” grabs your attention with a scene worthy of a high-end disaster movie: an incredible depiction of a tsunami. Knowing that it’s coming, as many people will from the previews and advertisements, won’t lessen the impact of this tour de force, which is frighteningly believable in every…
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Life Of Pi [2012] ★★★½
This visually stunning film deserves all the praise it’s been receiving. And we owe it all to director Ang Lee and his wonderful imagination. Everything about it is outstanding, especially when you consider that it is based on a book many considered unfilmable. So what’s it about? Actually, it’s about many things, but first and…
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The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 [2012] ★★
“Breaking Dawn part 2” is being presold as the best “Twilight” movie of the series. Faint praise, indeed. And also misleading. The first movie, released in 2008, is still the most bearable because director Catherine Hardwicke dove into the adolescent angst of Stephenie Meyer’s novel without an ounce of condescension. “New Moon” on the other hand directed by Chris…
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Pitch Perfect [2012] ★★½
I’m not a big fan of musical comedies, but “Pitch Perfect” kept me entertained, at least for a while, even as it covered familiar territory. Audiences who liked “Bring it On” for instance will definitely get a kick out of it. Anna Kendrick does a good job as a college freshman who dreams of being…
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The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey [2012] ★★★
Here’s the buzz: “The Hobbit” is not a masterpiece and lacks the epic scale of “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. But one thing’s for sure: “An Unexpected Journey”, Episode One in Peter Jackson’s three-part screen version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s book is a solid piece of entertainment. We’ll have to wait another year for “The Desolation of Smaug”, and still…
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Silver Linings Playbook [2012] ★★★
You will hear a lot about this movie. But first you’ll hear it from me. It’s damn rare these days to encounter a film that doesn’t rely on cheap tricks and a predictable script. That’s one reason why “Silver Linings Playbook” is so good. The characters in it are like nothing we’ve seen before, and…
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Anna Karenina [2012] ★★★
Granted that screen and tv adaptations of Leo Tolstoy’s most popular novel are nothing new, the last being a 2000 British version. And granted that the peak is still the 1935 movie starring Greta Garbo and Fredric March. But even the most faithful fans must allow that director Joe Wright, has given Tolstoy’s novel a beguilingly…
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Sinister [2012] ★★
In this watchable but instantly forgettable horror movie, Ethan Hawke plays a true-crime writer who moves his family into a house with a dark past, without telling his wife (Juliet Rylance) and kids (Michael Hall D’Addario, Clare Foley) that bit of information. Why? He wants to write a book about the events that took place in…
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Trouble With The Curve [2012] ★★½
If you like, you can think of “Trouble with the Curve” as the anti-Twilight. It’s the opposite of an Event Movie for the fall season; instead, it’s an old-fashioned star vehicle, fashioned for the particular screen persona of Clint Eastwood. As such, it’s easy to take and lightly enjoyable. One might even call it a “nice” movie, which…
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ParaNorman [2012] ★★½
“ParaNorman” is far from being a bad movie, but one thing was running through my mind the whole time: how could kids enjoy such a dark, twisted story? And ultimately that’s my problem with it. Norman is a weird little boy who sees dead people (think “The Sixth Sense”). Even his parents think he’s weird.…
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Flight [2012] ★★★
Sometimes a great actor is all you need to turn a routine movie about addiction into something memorable. Denzel Washington, who just keeps getting better, is a sparking, snapping live wire in the role of Capt. Whip Whitaker, a commercial pilot who performs heroically in the air, but can’t control his own life on the ground. Director…
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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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Paranormal Activity 4 [2012] and The Apparition [2012] ★½
Paranormal Activity 4:In the 4th and hopefully final installment in this never-ending series (we can always hope), a new family witnesses the same bullshit when a woman and a child move in with them. You know the drill: Have something pop out in the dark. Wait for a scream. Then drag out the next surprise…
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Hope Springs [2012] ★★★
People over 60 talking about sex and — yikes! — having it! Welcome to “Hope Springs”, a comedy drama that qualifies as a waking nightmare for teens and infantile men whose definition of “hot” hovers around women in their 20’s. Screw them. In this delightful movie from director David Frankel (who previously worked with Meryl Streep in…
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Take This Waltz [2012] ★★★
In an interview, Director Sarah Polley said that Seth Rogen and Michelle Williams brought their characters to life in unexpected ways. Trust her, she means it. They play a married couple, Lou and Margot, whose relationship is tested when Margot finds herself attracted to their new neighbor, Daniel (played by newcomer Luke Kirby). There seems to be…
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