PEOPLE LIKE US: Watch It At Home – Not The First Movie Like This Sam Harper (Chris Pine) is a guy we’ve met before. He’s the fast-talking, self-absorbed hustler who gets along in life by sheer nerve, and doesn’t really care about anyone else. He needs to open himself up to the problems […]
> The festival has its first crowd-pleaser in CELESTE AND JESSE FOREVER, a light but heartfelt romantic comedy-drama in the Woody Allen vein. Written by Rashida Jones (who also stars as Celeste) and Will Mc McCormack (on hand as well as a supportive weed dealer), it takes a different slant on the usual rom-com by […]
THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER: Worth A Ticket – The Serious Side of Being a Teen We certainly don’t lack for stories about high school in our popular culture. The CW and ABCFamily networks are almost entirely devoted to that brief, formative period (as is MTV when it does scripted shows like Awkward.). […]
BEAUTIFUL CREATURES: Watch It At Home – Many Witches, Little Magic BEAUTIFUL CREATURES can’t be dismissed as merely an overlong TV episode meant for the CW, but it never really comes together, either. Richard LaGravenese’s film is another on the tall pile of Young Adult fantasies trying to latch onto audiences now adrift without […]
MAGIC MIKE: Worth A Ticket – Soderbergh Again Earns His Crumpled Dollars Although he hasn’t appeared in any of the year’s giant action blockbusters (GI Joe 2, probably not that giant anyway, was postponed to next year), 2012 could well be remembered as the year of Channing Tatum. He’s had 3 major hits in […]
CAPTAIN PHILLIPS: Order Tickets Now – Exceptionally Taut, Intelligent Real-Life Thriller Paul Greenglass is a master of capturing pulse-pounding immediacy on film, and for most directors that would be enough. Hollywood would be more than happy to back a money truck up to his door and have him churn out nothing but additional Bourne […]
EVIL DEAD: Watch It At Home – Plenty of Icky, Not So Much Scary A slick, Hollywood-budgeted remake of Sam Raimi’s 1981 EVIL DEAD (actually there was a ‘the” in front of that one, the definite article having been misplaced over the decades) is sort of a contradiction in terms. The whole appeal of […]
NEBRASKA: Buy A Ticket – A Lovely, Tart Slice of Americana An unusually strong season for American movies continues with the arrival of the simple and profound NEBRASKA, directed by Alexander Payne from a marvelous script by first-time feature writer Bob Nelson. Among its other virtues, it manages to feature within its 114 minutes […]