OUR IDIOT BROTHER – Watch It At Home:  Sitcom On A Big Screen   Although it premiered at Sundance, OUR IDIOT BROTHER was an “independent film” only in a technical sense:  it was produced on a relatively low budget and didn’t have US distribution in place.  (Harvey Weinstein picked it up at the […]

> Derick Martini’s HICK is like a Sundance movie that took the wrong indie-film exit and wound up in Toronto.  For whatever reason, Toronto’s film festival tends to find itself with fewer stories of young people from small towns who come of age on the road, so Hick has a little air of distinction here. […]

> Worth A Ticket; An often stupendous achievement that courts ridicule–and sometimes earns it. Terrence Malick’s THE TREE OF LIFE is at once the filmmaker’s most emotionally grounded and dizzyingly ambitious film, his most relatable and esoteric piece of work.  In a sense it’s the definitive Malick film, the one that explores his chosen themes […]

> Worth a Ticket:  A funny, moving story about navigating the twists of life.   Mike Mills’ BEGINNERS is about the fumble for love, the wrong turns and mistakes that can delay–although luckily not always prevent–true happiness.  Mills has said that this story is semiautobiographical:  like his protagonist Oliver (Ewan McGregor), Mills learned after the […]

    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 […]

    FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS – Worth A Ticket:  Almost Great   For about an hour, as you watch his new FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS, you could be forgiven for thinking that writer-director Will Gluck is the future of Hollywood romantic comedy.  Gluck came out of TV with the very underrated Fired Up, about a pair […]

  PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3:  Worth A Ticket – More Minimalist Bumps In the Dark   The PARANORMAL ACTIVITY franchise is a movie studio’s dream come true.  The concept itself demands a no-star cast, a very limited number of settings and a bare minimum of special effects (the third and latest entry in the series cost […]

> Worth A Ticket; Birds Fly High Enough for Kids, and Adults Too. Click For More Reviews: THOR    PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 4    MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Animation has, over the past decade, passed beyond being merely a movie genre to a veritable industry within the industry.  Every studio is in the business now, making films […]