> Although Sundance still has several days to go, and surprises could spring up at any time (yesterday The Surrogate, a drama with John Hawkes as a man in an iron lung who decides to lose his virginity to a sex therapist played by Helen Hunt, came out of nowhere to win a huge $6M […]

  THE THREE STOOGES:  Watch It At Home – More Nyuks Than You’d Expect   The Farrelly Brothers’ THE THREE STOOGES is better than its marketing campaign let on, and while that would be more impressive if the trailer and ad materials hadn’t been almost unwatchably bad, it still makes for a welcome relief.  The […]

  This year’s Toronto International Film Festival had a very solid line-up, so much so that although the titles below are listed in rough order of preference, even the worst of them is of some interest, very possibly worth seeing for those intrigued by the genre or filmmaker.  The Festival, as has been the case […]

  JACK THE GIANT SLAYER:  Watch It At Home – No Giants Here It’s been a dozen years since moviegoers took up residence in Middle Earth with the opening of the first Lord of the Rings film, and since the multi-billion dollar success of that franchise, Hollywood has refused to let us leave.  Apart from […]

  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 […]

  JERSEY BOYS:  Watch It At Home – Clint Eastwood Directing the Broadway Hit Is As Weird As It Sounds No one will mistake the combination of Clint Eastwood and JERSEY BOYS for the fortuitous collision of chocolate and peanut-butter.  Some of Eastwood’s strongest tendencies as a filmmaker–admirable in the right context–fit badly here, and the result is […]

  THE DICTATOR:  Watch It At Home – Little Shock, No Awe   With Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen made one of the noisiest splashes into movie stardom of the past decade, daring and distinctive.  The question was whether he could follow it up.  And the answer, based on Bruno and the new THE DICTATOR, is […]

  It takes about an hour, but Nicholas McCarthy’s THE PACT, which premiered in the Park City At Midnight section at Sundance, eventually turns out to have a neat twist up its sleeve, one that switches the movie from haunted house horror to an entirely different subgenre of thriller.  And after that, a solid reel […]