Ridley Scott’s THE MARTIAN is the jaunty sci-fi offspring of Apollo 13 and McGyver, Scott’s least self-important movie in years and not coincidentally his most enjoyable.  Drew Goddard’s expertly crafted script (based on the best-selling novel by Andy Weir) has a premise both simple and massively complex:  during a giant sandstorm on the surface […]

  ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES:  Watch It At Home – Fun But Overextended Silliness ANCHORMAN 2:  THE LEGEND CONTINUES runs 119 minutes, which is rather too much of a not-bad thing (the original Anchorman, in 2004, was a brisk 94 minutes), but it pales in comparison to the accumulated length of the marketing campaign […]

ROCK OF AGES:  Watch It At Home – Stop Believin’   No one expects finesse from a movie musical constructed out of songs by Journey, Twisted Sister and Def Leppard.  And, to be certain, the hair-band era of the 80s wasn’t known for its “less is more” aesthetic.  But Adam Shankman’s jukebox musical Glee-ish movie […]

  21 JUMP STREET:  Watch It At Home – High School Meta-Bromance   The meta-ization of contemporary comedy marches on:  Community, of course, is a virtual meta-kingdom, but Happy Endings makes Friends jokes, this week’s 30 Rock undercut what appeared to be its own sentimental ending with jokes poking at viewers who might like sentimental […]

  To address the very specific elephant in HYDE PARK ON HUDSON‘s room:  it’s no King’s Speech.  It’s hard to avoid the comparison, because the two movies have a clear overlap, Hyde Park being the story of the 1939 visit King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (aka Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter, but played here by Samuel […]

  UPSTREAM COLOR:  Worth A Ticket – But Not If You Require Coherent Plotting I’d be lying if I said I really knew what the hell was going on in UPSTREAM COLOR, and yet the experience of watching it was surprisingly enjoyable, even gripping in an odd way.  Watching Shane Carruth’s film (he serves as […]

  IDENTITY THIEF:  Watch It At Home – Star Power Makes This Rote Comedy Look Better Than It Is IDENTITY THIEF is basically a string of contrivances, which makes it not all that different from most big-studio comedies these days.  The story arc traces all the way back to the screwball comedies of the 1930s […]

  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 […]