THAT AWKWARD MOMENT:  Watch It At Home – Low-Impact Rom-Com If you heard that a new indie movie featured the stars of the past 2 years’ back-to-back Sundance sensations, Michael B. Jordan from 2013’s Fruitvale Station and Miles Teller from this year’s Whiplash, would you be intrigued? What if Zac Efron was the other […]

  INHUMANS:  Friday 9PM on ABC (starting Sept 29) – Change the Channel In this world of Peak TV, it’s harder for a new series to break through the clutter than it’s ever been, and that thicket will be a veritable forest during the fourth week of September, when the major broadcast networks will follow […]

  THE GREAT GATSBY:  Watch It At Home – Moulin Gatsby Just for fun, let’s try to think of a worse match of filmmaker and material than Baz Luhrmann and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s THE GREAT GATSBY.  Judd Apatow’s Macbeth?  Woody Allen’s Lord of the Rings?  Michael Bay’s Remembrance of Things Past?  Jean-Luc Godard’s Shrek?  (Although […]

  DELIVERY MAN:  Not Even For Free – Vince Vaughn Tries Wholesomeness DELIVERY MAN, alas, is Vince Vaughn’s Patch Adams.  Vaughn’s desire to try something new is understandable:  he’s in his mid-40s now, and his rat-a-tat schemer schtick has been running thin lately (his last real hit was Couples Retreat in 2009); at this rate, […]

  WRATH OF THE TITANS:  Watch It At Home – Put Back the Kraken   The producers of WRATH OF THE TITANS swore that this time the 3D would be better than it was in 2010’s Clash of the Titans, and you know what… it is.  That’s not saying an enormous amount, since the 3D […]

  LAWLESS:  Watch It At Home – A Moonshine War To Make You Long for “Boardwalk Empire” Director John Hillcoat specializes in stark, emotionally distanced pulp, and if that sounds like a contradiction in terms, often it is.  His Australian western The Proposition, about a man murderously stalking his own brother, had a gnarled power, […]

ROCK OF AGES:  Watch It At Home – Stop Believin’   No one expects finesse from a movie musical constructed out of songs by Journey, Twisted Sister and Def Leppard.  And, to be certain, the hair-band era of the 80s wasn’t known for its “less is more” aesthetic.  But Adam Shankman’s jukebox musical Glee-ish movie […]

  SHORT TERM 12:  Run To the Multiplex – Powerful and Moving Indie Drama How can I make you want to see SHORT TERM 12?  It’s one of the year’s best pictures, but I feel as though describing the plot and setting will make it sound like a collection of the preachiest kind of pat […]