> Not Even For Free; The 3D Must Stand For “Dull Deadly Dud” If you squint at the post-apocalyptic desert wasteland settings of PRIEST, I swear you can see the camera crews from The Book of Eli, Jonah Hex, Resident Evil and Ultraviolet trying to duck out of frame.  At this point, I don’t think […]

> The magically moving portraits are pulled off the walls of Hogwarts in 2007’s HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX, and the colors have started draining from the Potter universe.  Gone are the lush visuals of Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire; the palette of Slawomir Idziak’s photography (his films include Kieslowski’s […]

  As Alex in A Clockwork Orange would say, this is the real and like tragic part of the story beginning, O my brothers.  After Batman Returns undergrossed Batman by $90M in the US, Warners, you might say, freaked out.  Although everyone was careful to agree that Tim Burton and the studio had mutually parted […]

  THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN:  Worth A Ticket – The Return of Steven Spielberg   Remember how lousy the last Indiana Jones movie was?  Remember watching it and wondering sadly what had become of Steven Spielberg, the magician who for decades had an irresistible, inexhaustible ability to spin action sequences into sight gags into satisfying […]

> Worth a Ticket:  Diesel and The Rock keep their pedals to the metal. If you want to feel truly American, try reflecting on the new FAST FIVE while wall-to-wall coverage of the British royal wedding is airing on the television before you.  Every culture gets the pop entertainment it craves, and the dumb, disreputable […]

YOUNG ADULT: Worth A Ticket – Theron + Oswalt = The Real Thing   Charlize Theron plays the hell out of her character Mavis Gary in the new YOUNG ADULT.  Theron has had a curious Hollywood career, with the usual big-budget flops (remember Aeon Flux?) mixed with a clearly wholehearted commitment to difficult, independent projects […]

> When the inevitable US remake of the French thriller SLEEPLESS NIGHT arrives, it’ll benefit from some sharper dialogue (assuming the subtitles in Toronto were fully translating the original), a bit more characterization and a slightly more varied tone.  But the framework already exists for a solid action hit. The picture begins as a variant […]

> It’s actually harder to come up with a manageable list of Honorable Mention movies than a Top 10, because there are so many films that are eminently worth seeking out and seeing, but perhaps a little bit flawed–sometimes too thin, sometimes too audacious for their own good.  It wouldn’t have been much of a […]