WHAT’S YOUR NUMBER? – Worth a Ticket:   The Number’s Higher Than You’d Think   Romantic comedies that are actually romantic and comic are so rare these days, it doesn’t matter so much that WHAT’S YOUR NUMBER? is in many ways thoroughly second-rate.  It delivers some laughs and a likable couple to root for, […]

      CONTRABAND:  Worth A Ticket – Working-Class Thriller   CONTRABAND is a B movie, but oddly enough, that’s one thing in short supply these days.  Action movies in modern Hollywood usually come with giant CG-laden budgets, or with a Drive-like overweening sense of self-importance.  A modest picture that simply wants to entertain for […]

> Chris Columbus’ Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets were well-crafted, entertaining movies, but Alfonso Cuaron’s 2004 HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN was the first real Potter film. It’s also the least successful financially (if you think $795M worldwide is something to complain about).  This may be because it’s burdened by the most […]

> 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 […]

    MELANCHOLIA – Watch It At Home – The Title Tells the Tale   Here’s a quick primer in Oscar rules and how studios can get around them.  In order for a film to be Oscar-eligible (other than in a few special categories like Documentary and Foreign Film), it needs a theatrical release in […]

    TOWER HEIST:  Watch It At Home – Hardly Luxury-Class   There may never have been a director more proud of being a hack than Brett Ratner.  In a recent NY Times profile, Ratner boasts (when he’s not going on about his friendship with Roman Polanski, because yeah, there’s a social relationship you’d want […]

  2012 was, in the end, a very good year for movies–or a a good half-year, more accurately.  With the studios continuing to load their best efforts into the festival- and awards-heavy fall and winter part of the calendar, not a single one of the Top 10 below opened before July, and only 3 before […]

> Watch It At Home: As Long and Uneven As a Real-Life Wedding. Few recent movies have arrived bearing such a bouquet of goodwill as the new comedy BRIDESMAIDS.  It marks the movie starring and screenwriting (with Annie Mumolo) debut of Kristen Wiig, generally considered one of the shining lights of this generation’s “Saturday Night […]