> Not Even For Free. There’s a key scene in the new SOUL SURFER where the one-armed teen surfer Bethany Hamilton, who’s had her other arm chewed off by a shark and who despairs of her career in competition, is in Thailand on a Christian mission to tend to tsunami survivors.  And these survivors, having […]

>   Watch It At Home:  That’s MR. Spielberg To You JJ Abrams’ SUPER 8 is the Beatlemania of Steven Spielberg movies.   Abrams is no doubt absolutely genuine in his reverence for classics from the 1970s and 80s like Jaws, Close Encounters, ET, Poltergeist and The Goonies, all produced or directed by the master–Abrams […]

> If you were going to describe the films of Terence Davies (Distant Voices, Still Lives, The Long Day Closes, The House of Mirth) in one word, that word would not be “dynamic.”  Or “kinetic.”  Or, well, “exciting.”  Davies directs stately tableaux, impressive and sometimes moving, but rooted in nostalgia and regret. Which is why […]

  MONTE CARLO:  Watch It At Home – The Usual Tourist Stops   Beware the credit “Screen Story by.”  It means that whatever the original source material for a movie may have been, it’s essentially been abandoned, looted for a single story element that’s now attached to an entirely different script.  In the case of […]

  FOOTLOOSE:  Watch It At Home – Faithfully Reproduces the Original For Good and Bad   1980s week at the multiplex continues with a remake of FOOTLOOSE, a trip back to the territory of Herbert Ross’s 1984 hit.  (Financially, by the way, there was no contest between the 1980s versions of this weekend’s entries:  the […]

      GONE:  Not Even For Free – Gone?  Not Soon Enough   When was the last time you saw a non-ironic, non-parody movie where someone was sneaking around in a room belonging to a possible villain, searching in almost total silence for evidence in the recesses of a dark closet, when–literally!–a cat came […]

> Watch It At Home:  Morgan Spurlock’s latest doc is more stunt than revelation. If Michael Moore were a movie franchise, Morgan Spurlock would be the direct-to-video entry in the series.  Or maybe the one that adds cheesy 3D effects to squeeze out every last dollar.   Moore is, lord knows, self-aggrandizing and fond of the […]

    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; […]