LES MISERABLES – Worth A Ticket – One Day More Finally Arrives In light of some of the early reactions, perhaps the most important thing to note about LES MISERABLES the film is that it is, in fact, the film of Les Miserables–and so, yes, bombastic voices raised in song and unfettered melodrama are the order of the day. […]

  PROMETHEUS:  Worth A Ticket – For the Visual Splendor, Not the Plot   Expectations were undoubtedly too high for PROMETHEUS.  The Alien franchise (and notwithstanding Ridley Scott and co-writer Damon Lindelof’s hemming and hawing on the subject, it’s utterly clear that Prometheus is nothing but a prequel entry in the franchise) has never been […]

  GROWN UPS 2:  Not Even With A Gun To Your Head – Is It Time For the Razzies Yet? One can’t lightly dismiss Adam Sandler.  After the first Grown Ups, it seemed implausible that he could make a movie even worse, but in quick succession he churned out the truly unspeakable Jack & Jill […]

>Benh Zeitlin’s BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD is the kind of movie that makes people wince when they hear “independent film”. A tale, with magical realist overtones, set in the mostly African-American poverty of the Louisiana bayous, it’s narrated by its precocious child protagonist, known as Hushpuppy (Quvenzhane Wallis). Hushpuppy lives with her father Wink […]

> There’s a principled discussion to be had about whether the Sundance Film Festival should be featuring movies that are essentially low-budget Hollywood entertainments made outside the studio system. But that discussion fades into irrelevance when the result is as hilarious and accomplished as FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL…, which premiered tonight. Directed by first-time […]

  LOOPER:  Worth A Ticket – Maybe Too Enthralling For Its Own Good   Rian Johnson’s most salient trait as a filmmaker may be a tendency to get carried away.  His first film, Brick, was a high school film noir so shrouded in mock-tough guy dialogue and exhaustively detailed mood that it forgot to tell […]

THE WATCH:  Not At Any Price – Do the Stars a Favor:  Don’t Watch Some terrible movies surprise and disappoint, but you could see THE WATCH coming for weeks.  The increasingly desperate marketing campaign told the story–it’s a buddy comedy!  it’s a sci-fi comedy!  it’s a buddy comedy and a sci-fi comedy!–as did the panicky […]

  SAVAGES:  Watch It At Home – Great Book, OK Movie Don Winslow’s novel SAVAGES is one of the extraordinary reads of recent years.  The plot may sound unremarkable–a mini-war is waged between a couple of Orange County drug dealers and a Mexican cartel–but the words “gripping” and “page-turning” don’t do justice to Winslow’s prose, […]