THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN:  Worth A Ticket – The Return of Steven Spielberg   Remember how lousy the last Indiana Jones movie was?  Remember watching it and wondering sadly what had become of Steven Spielberg, the magician who for decades had an irresistible, inexhaustible ability to spin action sequences into sight gags into satisfying […]

> On Homevideo:  See It On Any Screen One of the great things about growing up in New York during the 1970s was experiencing the films of Sidney Lumet, who died today at the age of 86.  Lumet had been making great pictures since the 1950s; his first film–his first film–was 12 Angry Men, and […]

> Watch It At Home: Fodder For the Undemanding Young One of the running gags in MR. POPPER’S PENGUINS is that the birds are fascinated by old Charlie Chaplin movies, and can be kept calm for hours just by placing them in front of a TV displaying the silent films.  Mr. Popper’s own ambition is […]

> Here are capsule summaries of all this year’s SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival reviews, arranged more or less in order of preference.  Click on each title for the full review, and the complete list of all the reviews is here.  SHAME:  Audiences who go to the new film by Steve McQueen (not that one) for […]

  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 […]

  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 […]

  And then this happened. With BATMAN & ROBIN, the franchise that had been reclaimed for adults by Tim Burton in 1989 was turned back over to children (and not bright children) by Joel Schumacher in 1997.  Schumacher took everything he’d done in Batman Forever and turned it up, as they say, to 11.  He […]

> Watch It At Home:  Gibson Delivers, The Movie Wobbles As you may have heard, the new comedy-drama THE BEAVER stars a guy named Mel Gibson, who used to be a big-time movie star.  (It’s actually a surprise to realize how long ago that was:  his last real hit was Signs, 9 years ago–to put […]