TRANCE:  Watch It At Home – Tricky But Unsatisfying Thriller From Danny Boyle TRANCE is both extremely clever and remarkably stupid.  I wish I could explain exactly how, but Danny Boyle’s thriller, written by John Hodge and Joe Ahearne, has the kind of story that piles reversals on twists on reveals, so there’s not […]

  David Ayer’s END OF WATCH brings a new wrinkle to the “found-footage” genre by using it in a cop movie.  LAPD Officer Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) wires a camera to his uniform, and constantly photographs what’s going on while he’s on the beat, supposedly to generate footage for a documentary he wants to put […]

TO ROME WITH LOVE:  Worth A Ticket – Woody Allen Takes A Roman Holiday   At the age of 76, with 44 films and a moving van’s worth of awards to his credit, Woody Allen doesn’t worry too much about topping himself.  His assembly line readies next year’s movie for production before the current year’s […]

  BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR:  Buy A Ticket – A 3-Hour Deep Dive Into A Character’s Soul BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR is relentlessly, sometimes suffocatingly intimate.  By that I don’t mean its celebrated, lengthy (although simulated) sex scenes between lead characters Adele (Adele Exarchopolous) and Emma (Lea Seydoux), which have earned it an […]

  THE JUDGE (Warners) – Opens October 10 – Watch It At Home Since the first Iron Man opened, Robert Downey Jr. has been one of the world’s biggest (and wealthiest) stars.  But he hasn’t used his superpowers for good:  in the 6 years that have followed, he’s interspersed Tony Stark extravaganzas only with entries […]

  BLACKHAT:  Not Even For Free – One of Michael Mann’s Worst Michael Mann has become a filmmaking vampire; he sucks the blood out of promising projects.  His new, seemingly up-to-the-minute computer hacking thriller BLACKHAT, following his problematic Miami Vice film and Public Enemies (as well as the pilot for HBO’s Luck) is once again his trademark kind […]

  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 […]

  A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD:  Not Even For Free – Yippee-Ki-Boo As part of its promotion campaign for the new A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD, 20th Century Fox is holding a day-long series of Die Hard marathons around the country, culminating in the opening night screening of the latest chapter in the […]