THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO:  Worth A Ticket – David Fincher Meets Lisbeth Salander   The most remarkable thing about David Fincher’s version of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (written for the English-language screen by Steven Zaillian) is that while remaining, for the most part, scrupulously faithful to the best-selling novel by […]

> Watch It At Home:  Petty larceny. Sometimes casting can be too good:  Keanu Reeves playing a guy who pretty much sleepwalks through his own life is practically redundant.  His whole style, from the very start of his career in the Bill and Ted pictures (more than 20 years ago!), has been to lag a […]

  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 […]

    I DON’T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT – Not Even For Free:  You Don’t Want To Know   The recent movie I DON’T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT most resembles is The Nanny Diaries, which is odd because it was a flop for Harvey Weinstein and The Weinstein Company, and yet Weinstein’s studio […]

  POINT BLANK – Worth a Ticket:  A Thrill-Ride with Subtitles   The most gripping Hollywood thriller of the summer is… in French.  (But not for long.)  This isn’t a complete surprise:  POINT BLANK‘s director/co-writer Fred Cavaye may not be a household name, but he made the film Anything For Her, the 96-minute thriller that […]

> Watch It At Home;  The thrills are so postmodern, they don’t seem to be happening in the theater. When the original Scream arrived in 1996, the slaughtering-the-teenagers genre was already old enough to drive; the first Friday the 13th had opened more than 16 years before.  The conventions of the form were as well-worn […]

  30 MINUTES OR LESS – Watch It At Home:  Doesn’t Deliver   The frustration of 30 MINUTES OR LESS is that of all the R-rated comedies this summer, it was the one with the most original premise and promising credentials:  direction by Ruben Fleischer, the man behind the surprisingly smart and funny hit Zombieland, […]

  THE SITTER:  Not At Any Price – Adventures In Bad Moviemaking   Jonah Hill is awfully lucky to have made Moneyball this year.  In that film, fueled by a brilliant Aaron Sorkin/Steven Zaillain script, he gave a marvelous performance as half of the year’s most unlikely comedy team with Brad Pitt, but since then […]