THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU (Warners) – Opens September 19 – Worth A Ticket Jonathan Tropper’s very successful day job is writing seriocomic novels about families and romance that are distinguished by their male protagonists–the ground he trods is similar to Nick Hornby’s, but without quite matching Hornby’s freshness of approach or wit.  […]

  BROKEN CITY:  Watch It At Home – Wahlberg and Crowe In An Intriguing But Too Simplistic Thriller Studios love nothing better than predictability, so since Mark Wahlberg had a tidy January hit last year with Contraband, it was no surprise when Fox slotted his new thriller BROKEN CITY for the same weekend in 2013.  […]

  A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST:  Not Even For Free – They Don’t Include “Die Laughing” Seth MacFarlane, out from behind his high-concept animated and fantasy premises, has a surprisingly retro, even conservative sense of humor.  For all the many, many four-letter words in A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST, and […]

  ENDER’S GAME:  Watch It At Home – Breaks The Rules, But Doesn’t Win the Game You don’t often see a $110M (plus marketing) YA adventure, intended to kick off a new movie franchise, as resolutely off-putting as ENDER’S GAME, and that’s worthy of some respect.  Its protagonist, Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield), isn’t cool like a […]

  THE INCREDIBLE BURT WONDERSTONE:  Not Even For Free – While You’re Watching… Poof!  It’s Gone It would have been a neat trick if Steve Carell could have pulled off as clear a Will Ferrell role as the lead in THE INCREDIBLE BURT WONDERSTONE.  But Ferrell’s brand of flamboyant, childish, deluded yet vulnerable vaingloriousness just […]

  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 […]

  RISE OF THE GUARDIANS:  Worth a Ticket – “The Avengers” as Holiday Fantasy RISE OF THE GUARDIANS doesn’t entirely look or feel like what we’ve come to expect from DreamWorks Animation.  Under Peter Ramsey’s direction (his first feature), the images have a burnished, almost pewter-tinted glow, a glint of long-forgotten memory, very different from […]

    THE LUCKY ONE:  Watch It At Home – Not If The One Is In The Audience   Zac Efron has been working out, and he wants you to know it.  Efron’s new biceps and abs are on frequent display in THE LUCKY ONE, often shiny with sweat and otherwise photographed by director Scott […]