THE AVENGERS:  Worth A Ticket – A Fun Summer Movie, No More Or Less   It’s easy to forget that THE AVENGERS is, you know, a movie.  It’s perhaps the ultimate example of corporate intellectual property, bioengineered years in advance of its production by Marvel and that company’s recent owner Disney, like the spawn […]

ABRAHAM LINCOLN:  VAMPIRE HUNTER – Not Even For Free – An Unconstitutional Offense Against Moviegoers   Honestly:  how is a movie called ABRAHAM LINCOLN:  VAMPIRE HUNTER not a comedy?  It’s as if Woody Allen had given the title Bananas to his film Interiors–it makes no sense.  And yet, Timur Bekmambetov’s picture, and presumably the source […]

  KILLING THEM SOFTLY:  Watch It At Home – Low-Rent Gangsters and A Study In American Existentialism Andrew Dominik’s talents as a filmmaker are matched only by his pretentions.  Dominik’s first film was the Australian Chopper, which introduced Eric Bana to the world, but he’s better known for his mournful The Assassination of Jesse James […]

  OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN:  Watch It At Home – Better Luck in June In Hollywood’s grand tradition of 2 movies about volcanoes, 2 about Snow White, 2 about Christopher Columbus and 2 about Truman Capote, this year we’re getting a pair of terrorist attacks on the White House, each foiled by a heroic Secret Service […]

  THE CONJURING:  Worth A Ticket – Retro Horror, In A Good Way Watching The Exorcist recently, for the first time in probably a decade, the most striking thing about it was its insistence on a palpable, sometimes documentary-like reality.  Director William Friedkin moved the film at a measured, even slow pace, only gradually raising […]

  THE WOLF OF WALL STREET:  Buy A Ticket – Scorsese’s Boisterous Epic of Bottomless Greed The key sequence in Martin Scorsese’s THE WOLF OF WALL STREET arrives about 2 hours into its 3-hour length.  (No meaningful spoilers here.)  The resoundingly crooked financier Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his equally bent sidekick Donnie Azoff (Jonah […]

  ST. VINCENT (Weinstein) – Opens October 24 – Worth A Ticket Bill Murray has perfected the persona of the grouchy, reluctant hero.  The image has even attached itself to him professionally:  although he’s not close to being even semi-retired (ST. VINCENT, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and opens next month, will be […]

> The festival has its first crowd-pleaser in CELESTE AND JESSE FOREVER, a light but heartfelt romantic comedy-drama in the Woody Allen vein. Written by Rashida Jones (who also stars as Celeste) and Will Mc McCormack (on hand as well as a supportive weed dealer), it takes a different slant on the usual rom-com by […]