HORRIBLE BOSSES – Watch It At Home:  Doesn’t Earn A Raise   A comedy can get away with not being very good as long as it’s funny, and HORRIBLE BOSSES delivers some laughs.  Most of those come from the chemistry between stars Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day, and since the funniest bits […]

  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 […]

  LARRY CROWNE:  Watch It At Home – Giant Stars/Tiny Ambitions   Allow me to play Nostradamus for a moment.  the day will come–and it’s not far off–when you’ll be sitting in front of your TV set, remote in hand (or maybe you’ll be looking at your online streaming site, the vision is a little […]

  TRANSFORMERS:  DARK OF THE MOON – Worth A Ticket – But Only If You Insist On Seeing It This is what gives ulcers to control freak movie directors:  despite Michael Bay’s well-publicized orders to theater projectionists, at tonight’s premiere IMAX showing of TRANSFORMERS:  DARK OF THE MOON in West Los Angeles, the 3D system […]

    A BETTER LIFE – Watch It At Home:  Earnest Isn’t Enough   Impending disaster hangs over every early scene of Chris Weitz’s new film A BETTER LIFE.  As soon as we’re introduced to Carlos Galindo (Demian Bichir) and learn that he’s an illegal immigrant, eking out a life as a gardener in Los […]

>    Worth A Ticket:  Grade It On A Curve In 1999, Jake Kasdan directed a project set in high school that starred Jason Segel and featured Dave (Gruber) Allen in its ensemble; it was called Freaks and Geeks, and it has its own special place in pop culture history.   His new BAD TEACHER… […]

  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 […]

>   Not At Any Price:  Phony As A 3-Dollar Bill THE ART OF GETTING BY (then called “Homework”) stood out at Sundance like an unsore thumb.  In the midst of high-quality, serious films that were at least trying to be about something (several of which will be opening later this summer), Art Of Getting […]