WE BOUGHT A ZOO:  Worth A Ticket – Cameron Crowe Pays His Dues and Keeps His Dignity   There’s a classic line in Albert Brooks’s incredibly prescient 1979 Real Life where Brooks, as the prototype of a reality-television director, tries to decide whether to do something unethical.  His rationalization for going ahead:  “What […]

    Not Even For Free   Remember Ken Russell’s movie of The Who’s Tommy?  The scene where Ann-Margret’s nervous breakdown was visualized by her television set vomiting out baked beans, chocolate and similar goo?  Watching Zach Snyder’s SUCKER PUNCH is like having that TV on permanent DVR.

> THE CHANGE UP – Watch It At Home:  Cliches with Dirty Words Are Still Cliches There have been plenty of R-rated comedies this summer–a bumper crop, really–but none more fully committed to raunch than THE CHANGE-UP.  The script by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (they wrote The Hangover, but also Ghosts of Girlfriends Past) […]

    CAPTAIN AMERICA:  THE FIRST AVENGER – Worth A Ticket:  Marvel Goes Back To the Future   There’s a certain irony in the fact that, in this summer of Super 8 and its Spielberg rapture, the most successfully Spielbergian movie of the season is Marvel’s CAPTAIN AMERICA:  THE FIRST AVENGER.  Its connection to Steven […]

    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 […]

> ARTHUR CHRISTMAS: Worth A Ticket – Yuletime Tidings With the Aardman Touch As the Thanksgiving holiday box-office has started to be counted, it’s become fairly clear that there isn’t much of an audience, at least in the US, for ARTHUR CHRISTMAS. Which is too bad, because it happens to be one of the warmest […]

  CARS 2 – Watch It At Home:  Pixar Shifts Into Second Gear CARS 2 is preceded by a short subject, the first in what’s intended as a series called Toy Story Toons.  Entitled Hawaiian Vacation, it features all the familiar characters and voices, runs about 10 minutes, and effortlessly recaptures the joy, wit and […]

    Everything is a little smoother in 2002’s HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS.  The young actors give more assured performances; Steve Kloves’ script, having gotten so much exposition out of its way in Sorcerer’s Stone, is faster and more character-based; the camerawork (by Roger Pratt instead of John Seale) is more fluid; […]