Albert Nobbs was not my cup of tea, but it could possibly be yours. I’m not a big fan of period pieces, but I thought that by virtue of an incredible performance by Glenn Close, I would transcend my prejudice. Was Close’s performance technically excellent? Yes, probably. She had the accent, the gait, the look, [...]
Read More Albert Nobbs, drama, Glenn Close, Janet McTeer, joyce, Mia Wasikowska, Rodrigo Garcia
You’d think a movie about Liam Neeson duking it out with wolves in the wild would be exciting. You’d be wrong. Turns out The Grey, a macho but mushy existential survival tale directed by Joe Carnahan, is actually quite a slog — dreary, overly talky and capped by one of those maddeningly ambiguous endings that [...]
Read More action, adventure, Dallas Roberts, David, Dermot Mulroney, drama, Frank Grillo, Joe Carnahan, Liam Neeson, The Grey
In Chronicle we get one of the year’s best films, a fun and cool and awesome piece of lower-budget sci-fi that uses the found footage format, a simple but neat premise and seamless special effects to deftly detail in larger-than-life fashion what I imagine are the horrors of being a bullied teenager today. Dreamed up [...]
Read More Chronicle, Dane DeHaan, David, drama, Josh Trank, Max Landis, Sci-Fi, thriller
Having skipped the prequel Rise of the Lycans, Kate Beckinsale returns to rock skintight leather and kick quite a bit more butt as beautiful bloodsucker Selene in Underworld: Awakening, the slick but strangely spiritless fourth entry in the nearly decade-old vampires-vs-werewolves franchise.
Read More action, blu-ray, David, DVD, Fantasy, horror, Kate Beckinsale, Michael Ealy, Stephen Rea, Theo James, Underworld
Rarely have I rolled my eyes, or wanted to gag, more than while watching New Year’s Eve, director Garry Marshall’s nigh unbearable Valentine’s Day follow-up, a movie seemingly constructed to be the Gone with the Wind of soft-serve rom-com mash-ups, and run nearly as long.
Read More Abigail Breslin, Ashton Kutcher, blu-ray, comedy, David, DVD, Garry Marshall, Hilary Swank, Josh Duhamel, Katherine Heigl, New Year's Eve, Robert De Niro, romance, Sarah Jessica Parker
Haywire, directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Gina Carano is the story of a private sector security agent who is double crossed and sets forth on a mission of revenge. First question: Who is Gina Carano? Gina is a mixed martial arts fighter and, I’m totally serious, a former “American Gladiator.” While this is not [...]
Read More action, adventure, Bill Paxton, Channing Tatum, Ewan McGregor, Gina Carano, Haywire, Michael Douglas, Michael Fassbender, Noah, Steven Soderbergh, thriller
If, like me, you can watch the first and last episodes of Freaks and Geeks over and over again just to see Lindsay Weir (Linda Cardellini) dancing to Styx and The Grateful Dead with joyous abandon, you’ll know why I chose to review Return. Cardellini finally, finally
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Poetry. We’re stymied by it. The stack of “great” books we don’t read on vacation will be missing even the slimmest tome of verse. On the page or as “spoken word” performance,
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Mark Wahlberg’s new action thriller, the New Orleans-set Contraband, is the cinematic equivalent of settling, a movie that’s not bad nor especially good, but has just enough going for it that you won’t necessarily regret spending two hours watching it.
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