> As is traditionally the case, movie boxoffice declined sharply on December 24, the lowest ebb of the holiday period.  According to Deadline, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL (Paramount) remains #1, with $5.6M on Saturday, a 40+% fall from Friday.  Similarly, SHERLOCK HOLMES:  A GAME OF SHADOWS (Warners) fell around 45% to $3.8M on Saturday.  […]

> Josh Radnor’s writing/directing debut happythankyoumoreplease, which played Sundance a couple of years ago, was a promising, entertaining NY-set romantic comedy-drama that hailed from the Woody Allen division of indie film. His second film LIBERAL ARTS, which premiered last night at the festival, still sips from the fount of Woody (in this case, particularly from […]

> Until its final 45 minutes, the one thing that could be said about this year’s Oscar telecast was that it was at least brisk.  Merely 2 hours and 15 minutes into the show, there were amazingly only 3 awards and the In Memorium segment still to go.  But for ABC, running under the appointed […]

> UPDATE:  The Deadline numbers have shifted quite a bit from their earlier incarnation:  HUNGER GAMES is now estimated at $19.5M for Friday (a 71% drop from opening day) and a $55M weekend (down 64%).  If that number holds, GAMES would have the 11th highest 2d weekend ever, although only $200K away from the Top […]

    Worth a ticket.   In movies, as in life, when someone is offered an illicit miracle drug that seems too good to be true, it usually is. So the general narrative arc of LIMITLESS doesn’t come as a huge surprise. What is surprising is that Neil Burger’s film, predicted to be the highest […]

  COLOMBIANA – Not Even For Free:  Even the Body Count Is Dull   For a movie from the Luc Besson House of Action, COLOMBIANA is surprisingly listless and dispirited.  Besson first came to prominence as a director, with pictures like Subway and The Big Blue to his credit; then in 1990, he hit the […]

    THE MUPPETS:  Watch It At Home – Nonstop Cuteness   When it was announced that Disney’s new movie of THE MUPPETS (the Mouse House bought the entire franchise from Jim Henson’s company some years ago) was going to be written by Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller, previously behind Forgetting Sarah Marshall (and Stoller […]

    BEING FLYNN:  Watch It At Home – Troubling Story That Doesn’t Go Deep Enough   There’s a scene in Paul Weitz’s new film BEING FLYNN where Jonathan Flynn (Robert DeNiro), the alcoholic, narcissistic, pitiful, self-destructive father of Nick (Paul Dano), reads to his son from a publisher’s rejection letter.  Jonathan sees himself as […]