THE IDES OF MARCH:  Watch It At Home – An Excellent Play Becomes a Merely Good Movie   The Ides of March, one of the most eagerly awaited of this year’s festival crop, is more entertaining than it is good. Oddly both low-key and melodramatic, claptrap and high-minded drama, it represents a series […]

    J. EDGAR:  Watch It At Home – Brokeback Hoover   It’s a little unexpected that of all the films Clint Eastwood has directed, his new biography J. EDGAR most resembles The Bridges of Madison County.  Measured and mournful, the film, which opened the AFI Film Festival in Los Angeles last night and opens […]

  The year’s Top 10 movies are here, and a variety of honorable mentions are here.  But now for something completely different… Along with the egg nog and tinsel, there’s a certain undeniable seasonal pleasure to be had in singling out the truly spectacular misses of the movie year for some shame and ridicule.  We […]

    ONE FOR THE MONEY:  Not Even For Free – Another Heigl Misfire   Movie stars are, make no mistake, trademarks.  Consumers who invest in 2 hours of George Clooney or Will Smith expect the same kind of reliable enjoyment that they get from a can of Coke or a pair of Nikes.  And […]

  Pending the arrival of this week’s finale, Mike Newell’s 2005 HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE may be, on balance, the most satisfying of the series.  It combines first-rate moviemaking with one of J.K. Rowling’s most ingeniously constructed, emotionally rich stories–capped, of course, by the unveiling of Ralph Fiennes as the finally fully […]

    STAR WARS EPISODE I:  THE PHANTOM MENACE 3D, to give it its fully identifying title, has the distinction of being the most successful movie ever made that is generally agreed to be terrible.  Over $900M in tickets have been sold for Phantom Menace since its opening in 1999 (that number will go over […]

  Whatever one can say about Chris Columbus–and there’ll be plenty of less than glowing words about him below–he’s the man who cast Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson as the leads in 2001’s HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE, and for that Warners should name a building after him.  The three grew over […]

  DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK – Not Even For Free:  No, Really–Don’t Be Afraid     FilmDistrict has gone out of its way to identify co-writer/co-producer Guillermo del Toro with DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK, to the extent that from the marketing, one could easily fail to realize that the movie is […]