> Sundance has a thriving Park City At Midnight program that features plenty of high-octane horror movies, but the most unnerving and disturbing film of this year’s festival may have been Craig Zobel’s COMPLIANCE, a low-key drama based (apparently rather closely) on a true story without any hacked-off limbs or hint of the supernatural. In […]

> Now the only question is when they announce the start of  pre-production on LORAX 2. OPENINGS:  It turned out THE LORAX (Universal) wasn’t frontloaded at all.  Quite the contrary, its 80% Saturday bump put the movie through the roof, a triumph of great marketing over cruddy filmmaking.  Lorax is currently the 3d highest March […]

>Another win for Katniss Everdeen. THE HUNGER GAMES: In just its 3rd weekend of release, and with plenty left in the tank, THE HUNGER GAMES (Lionsgate/Summit) hit $302.8M, and has already outgrossed every picture in the Twilight series. (Only 5 movies have gotten to $300M faster.) By this time next week, it will also have […]

In recent years, the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film has come to stand for not much more than a fair level of craftsmanship and a comfortable pitch of moral predicament (The Secret In Their Eyes, Departures, and The Counterfeiters are the most recent undistinguished winners).  This year’s winner, Susanne Bier’s IN A BETTER WORLD, […]

  MACHINE GUN PREACHER:  Watch It At Home –  A True Story Rings False   MACHINE GUN PREACHER simply isn’t good enough for the story it wants to tell. And the story, a true one, is remarkable:  Sam Childers (played by Gerard Butler in the film) was a drug addict and violent criminal who found […]

    SHERLOCK HOLMES:  GAME OF SHADOWS:  Watch It At Home – Far Too Elementary   We have to come to terms with the fact that an entire generation may recognize the name Sherlock Holmes not as the template for brilliant amateur crime-solving, but as a moderately intelligent action-comedy hero who dresses up in funny […]

  21 JUMP STREET:  Watch It At Home – High School Meta-Bromance   The meta-ization of contemporary comedy marches on:  Community, of course, is a virtual meta-kingdom, but Happy Endings makes Friends jokes, this week’s 30 Rock undercut what appeared to be its own sentimental ending with jokes poking at viewers who might like sentimental […]

  THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN will begin spinning its midnight webs in just a few hours, so let’s take a quick look at its competition in the midnight screening record books. The Sam Raimi 2002-07 Spider-Man trilogy were successful at midnight, but with $8-10M grosses that have long since been passed. All of the current top […]