> Not Even For Free Let’s give a little love to the devious people at Universal who cut the trailers.  The masterminds behind the red-band for YOUR HIGHNESS managed to find, in its 102 dull minutes, roughly 3 and a half that, when cut together with fiendish skill, suggested the movie had actual laughs.  Bow […]

> One of the most heartening developments of the past couple of years has been the spreading popularity in theaters of cultural events presented in HD video.  Operas and ballets have become monthly features in many cities, and stage shows are now joining in:  Britain’s National Theatre has been presenting several productions on screen for […]

  30 MINUTES OR LESS – Watch It At Home:  Doesn’t Deliver   The frustration of 30 MINUTES OR LESS is that of all the R-rated comedies this summer, it was the one with the most original premise and promising credentials:  direction by Ruben Fleischer, the man behind the surprisingly smart and funny hit Zombieland, […]

  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 […]

  ANONYMOUS:  Watch It At Home – The Bard Was A Beard, Claims Wheezy Expose   ANONYMOUS is history tailored for the 1%. Although screenwriter John Orloff and director Roland Emmerich have swirled it into a complicated tangle of conspiracies and scandals, the idea at the center of Anonymous is simple enough (uh, Spoiler Alert):  […]

> If Arthur Schnitzler had only been a member of the WGA in 1900, when he wrote the play La Ronde, and he’d had the benefit of the format rights guild members receive today, he and his descendants would be very rich indeed.  Schnitzler’s concept, a series of sequences in which, initially, Person A meets […]

    MARGIN CALL:  Worth A Ticket – The Real Sequel to”Wall Street”   MARGIN CALL is smarter and more gripping than Moneyball and The Ides of March combined–and those are two smart, gripping movies.  However, the superb ensemble cast of Margin Call doesn’t boast a name as instantly bankable as Brad Pitt’s or George […]

> DRIVE is a self-conscious genre movie, and those are tricky propositions.  On the one hand, you need to make your existential or other textual statement with all the artistry at your command; on the other, you still have to fulfill the demands of the genre you’ve chosen.  If you do it right, you have […]