SHERLOCK HOLMES:  GAME OF SHADOWS:  Watch It At Home – Far Too Elementary   We have to come to terms with the fact that an entire generation may recognize the name Sherlock Holmes not as the template for brilliant amateur crime-solving, but as a moderately intelligent action-comedy hero who dresses up in funny […]

> Tonight at 43 real Imax theatres (the ones with the huge squarish screens), Warner Bros debuted an extended trailer for next summer’s THE DARK KNIGHT RISES shot in the full Imax format, consisting of the opening sequence and an extra minute or so of quick clips from the rest of the movie.  Apart from […]

  MISSION:  IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL:  Worth A Ticket – Routine But Spectacular   With MISSION:   IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL, Brad Bird makes the very unusual transition from animation auteur to live-action director.   Of course, since his animated work includes The Incredibles, one of the snazziest and smartest action-adventures of recent years, the leap […]

  THE SITTER:  Not At Any Price – Adventures In Bad Moviemaking   Jonah Hill is awfully lucky to have made Moneyball this year.  In that film, fueled by a brilliant Aaron Sorkin/Steven Zaillain script, he gave a marvelous performance as half of the year’s most unlikely comedy team with Brad Pitt, but since then […]

  TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY:  Worth A Ticket – An Epic of Betrayals   John LeCarre is (I guess one should say “arguably”) the greatest of all spy novelists, and his 1974 TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY is “arguably” his finest work.  Incredibly, the 1979 BBC miniseries adaptation lived up to the level of the novel, […]

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 […]

  NEW YEAR’S EVE:  Not At Any Price – Calling it a “Sit-Com” Insults TV   NEW YEAR’S EVE is such a calculated piece of commercial manufacture that it deserves a Powerpoint presentation more than a review.  Although strictly speaking it isn’t a sequel to Valentine’s Day (and in fact a few of the same […]

> 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 […]