Posted October 23, 2013in Film Review
“12 Years a Slave” 0 stars Rated R 133 minutes Drama Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael K. Williams, Michael Fassbender Steve McQueen is not a storyteller. He is an exploitation filmmaker specializing in outré subject matter who passes himself off as a cinematic artiste. He’s a phony who has managed to
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Posted October 16, 2013in Film Review
“CBGB” 2 stars Rated R 101 minutes Drama Starring: Alan Rickman, Malin Akerman, Justin Bartha You have to hand it to director/co-writer Randall Miller for trying to take on the hornets’ nest of the punk rock movement: CBGB’s, the grungy Lower East Side bar that gave punk a home base
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Posted October 09, 2013in Film Review
“Captain Phillips” 4 stars Rated PG-13 134 minutes Action Starring: Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi, Barkhad Abdirahman The grueling 2009 kidnapping ordeal suffered by U.S. cargo-ship captain Richard Phillips comes to tangible life in Paul Greengrass’ nonstop nail-biter. Nerves will be rattled. Regardless of the audience’s political opinions of the underlying
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Posted October 02, 2013in Film Review
“Rush” 2 stars Rated R 123 minutes Action Starring: Daniel Brühl, Chris Hemsworth, Olivia Wilde Ron Howard’s fast-paced portrait of one of Formula One’s fiercest rivalries is a hyper-compartmentalized affair. Everything in Peter Morgan’s too-tightly knit script occurs as one more bubble of narrative information equal to the last. The
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Posted September 25, 2013in Film Review
“The Prisoners” 3 stars Rated R 146 minutes Action Starring: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis While it lacks the oomph of a concrete true-crime drama such as “Zodiac,” Denis Villeneuve’s taut innovative suspense-thriller keeps you guessing. Renowned for his deserving 2011 Oscar-nominated drama “Incendies,” Villeneuve keeps the narrative puzzle
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Posted September 18, 2013in Film Review
“The Grandmaster” 3 stars Rated PG-13 108 minutes Action Starring: Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Ziyi Zhang, Jin Zhang Director Wong Kar Wai’s first return to the martial arts genre since his extravagant 1994 cinematic feast “Ashes of Time” is a stylistically profound dissection of kung fu as practiced in 1930s-
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Posted September 11, 2013in Film Review
“Salinger” 3 stars Rated PG-13 120 minutes Documentary Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Edward Norton, Judd Apatow Shane Salerno’s exhaustive bio-documentary about one of America’s most enigmatic and reclusive literary figures nonetheless manages to leave out essential elements that are only alluded to in the film. A cavalcade of interviews with
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Posted September 04, 2013in Film Review
“Closed Circuit” 3 stars Rated R 96 minutes Drama Starring: Eric Bana, Rebecca Hall, Jim Broadbent Gaping plot holes don’t prevent this nearly current espionage thriller from grabbing its audience and keeping them hooked all the way to its socially volatile ending. As the title hints, England’s CCTV (Closed Circuit
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Posted August 28, 2013in Film Review
“The World’s End” 3 stars Rated R 109 minutes Action Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Martin Freeman Although it exhibits nowhere near the level of inspired deconstructionist comic sophistication of “Shaun of the Dead” or “Hot Fuzz,” the latest effort from the writing team of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright
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Posted August 21, 2013in Film Review
“Kick-Ass 2” 1 star Rated R 113 minutes Action Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Chloë Grace Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse Exploitation-indoctrination cinema doesn’t come any more crass than this unnecessary follow-up to the first “Kick-Ass” (2010) movie. Adapting Mark Millar’s “creator-owned” comic book (illustrated by John Romita Jr.) to the movies is a
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