>Two Australian couples vacation together on the beaches of Cambodia, but only 3 people return. That’s the set-up for Kieran Darcy-Smith’s skilled debut WISH YOU WERE HERE, which premiered as part of Sundance’s World Cinema competition.The focal point of the story is the more settled, middle-class couple on the trip: Dave (Joel Edgerton) and Alice […]

  PAIN AND GAIN:  Watch It At Home – Michael Bay On a Small Scale is Still Michael Bay There’s an almost meta strain that runs through Michael Bay’s PAIN AND GAIN, and you have to wonder, watching it, how much Bay was conscious of the fact that his customary musclebound, bloated, meatheaded style of […]

  Sundance is sometimes thrilling, but it can also be an ordeal.  Especially when the films are good, but not great.  And even more so if you arrive with limited tickets, and are left to the tender mercies of the Wait List lines (which, given Sundance’s idiosyncratic approach to Wait Lists, requires standing on each […]

> The fundamental problem with LAY THE FAVORITE, Stephen Frears’ new film that premiered last night at Sundance, is that it’s made by people who seem to have little if any interest in gambling. And since this is a movie about the thrill and especially the business of gambling, that means they don’t have any […]

  ICE AGE:  CONTINENTAL DRIFT – Watch It At Home – The CSI of Family Franchises Does Its Thing   You know what the fabulous Peter Dinklage never gets to do on Game of Thrones?  Sing!  That’s remedied in the new 3D animated ICE AGE:  CONTINENTAL DRIFT, where as the voice of monkey pirate Captain […]

  PLAYING FOR KEEPS:  Not At Any Price – All Penalty, No Kick Has any actor more thoroughly wasted his 15 minutes in the Hollywood spotlight than Gerard Butler?  Since he hit with 300 half a dozen years ago, he’s churned out PS I Love You, Nim’s Island, RocknRolla, The Ugly Truth, Gamer, Law Abiding […]

  QUARTET:  Watch It At Home – AARP’s Version of a Rock Concert Reunion Movie It may come as a surprise to some of the directors who’ve tangled with Dustin Hoffman to hear that QUARTET is supposed to mark his first time in charge, but officially, at least, Hoffman has never taken the reins on […]

> I write this as a fairly obsessive fan of Stanley Kubrick, back since I desperately wanted to see A Clockwork Orange in its original X-rated release but was too young to get in. So the very idea of ROOM 237, a feature-length film by Rodney Ascher constructed of the theories and interpretations that have […]