Posted March 04, 2015in Film Review
I did not realize “Focus” was bad until I realized I had spent an hour wondering what side of the road Brazilians drive on. There is frequently a more than semantic difference between a film that is “good” and one that is “entertaining.” Good films are usually entertaining (though in
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Posted February 25, 2015in Film Review
If you could break life down into a series of Venn diagrams, at the point where the circles for “people who like sports” and “people who like movies” intersect, you would find “Kevin Costner fans.” Say what you will about Costner’s complete body of work, but there is no denying
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Posted February 18, 2015in Film Review
There are a number of things that make “Kingsmen” really cool: seeing Colin Firth — master of the period drama — throwing punches in fight scenes; the wonderfully choreographed action sequences; seeing Mark Hamill get some work. There are, however, a few things that make the film not so cool:
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Posted February 11, 2015in Film Review
It has been apparent for some time now that the Whachowski siblings are completely convinced of their own brilliance. The big problem with “Jupiter Ascending” is that they’ve apparently convinced Warner Bros. of it as well, and the studio has responded by handing them the keys and not looking back.
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Posted February 04, 2015in Film Review
Thrillers, especially modern ones, tend to follow a basic pattern. The audience is given a portion of the story early and allowed to try and figure out the rest as the film develops. Usually, viewers are trying to read the clues and figure out whodunit or some variation therein. Then
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Posted January 28, 2015in Film Review
As a critic, one tries to go into every scenario with an open mind. Once a film is identified as the one for review, I will go out of my way to avoid message boards trailers so as to approach each screening as open-minded as possible. Sometimes, though, you just
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Posted January 21, 2015in Film Review
Clint Eastwood has marked out an interesting career trajectory for himself. First he spent 30 years as one of Hollywood’s most consistent and bankable action stars. Then, after he got too old to bother with that anymore, he woke up one morning and said to himself, “To hell with it,
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Posted January 14, 2015in Film Review
The new year is just two weeks old, and it has already been kind enough to give us the first must-see film of the year. “Selma” is the story of one of the pivotal moments in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s: the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.-led march
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Posted January 07, 2015in Film Review
“The Woman in Black ” was released in 2012 and was a bit of a pet project put together by director James Watkins, writer Jane Goldman and actor Daniel Radcliffe. But fast forward to 2014 and none of those people are back for the sequel, “The Woman in Black
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Posted December 31, 2014in Film Review
Two films have been released this winter that are best described as character studies on real-life geniuses. The first was the Stephen Hawking biopic “The Theory of Everything,” and the second is the Christmas release of “The Imitation Game,” which looks at the life of Alan Turing. Unlike “Theory,”
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