> As has been reported, there really was an ambulance outside the Ryerson Theatre in Toronto after the midnight premiere of Alexandre Courtes’ THE INCIDENT, there to rescue at least one person who had fainted during the movie.  Of course, this may just mean that Toronto Film Festival patrons have delicate sensibilities–an idea supported by […]

  ONE DAY – Watch It At Home:  An Off-Day   What went wrong with ONE DAY?  It’s been clear for a while that its studio, Focus Features, didn’t have great confidence in the film:  first  they postponed the opening from its original midsummer date to late August (which has turned out to be an […]

    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 […]

> Today, 3 films from first-time directors: Caroline Bottaro’s marvelous QUEEN TO PLAY is, in a sense, a sports movie.  We have the out-of-nowhere player whose newly-discovered talent shakes up her whole life, the wise and somewhat eccentric mentor, even the climactic competition.  The game here, though, is chess, and the film (in French, with […]

    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 […]

> Watch It At Home:  Scrupulously accurate, to a fault. In an era that so recently gave us “The Kennedys,” possibly the worst piece of pop culture history ever produced for American television, it seems downright rude to criticize Robert Redford’s new film THE CONSPIRATOR for sticking to the facts.  Accuracy and drama, however, are […]

  PROJECT NIM:  Worth A Ticket – If You Can Stand It   At first I wondered why on earth Fox Searchlight hadn’t grabbed James Marsh’s documentary PROJECT NIM at Sundance, to serve as an unofficial prequel to Big Fox’s release of Rise of the Planet of the Apes next month.  It seemed like a […]

>   Watch It At Home:  That’s MR. Spielberg To You JJ Abrams’ SUPER 8 is the Beatlemania of Steven Spielberg movies.   Abrams is no doubt absolutely genuine in his reverence for classics from the 1970s and 80s like Jaws, Close Encounters, ET, Poltergeist and The Goonies, all produced or directed by the master–Abrams […]