NOTE TO READERS: Warner Bros has an embargo in place that delays reviews of THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG until Sunday morning.  While I viewed the film as a member of the general public, and hadn’t obtained my ticket subject to that embargo, I have agreed with Warners to abide by its terms, […]

  TOTAL RECALL:  Watch It At Home – Unmemorable TOTAL RECALL isn’t the worst picture of the summer, and probably won’t be the biggest flop, but it may be the most unnecessary waste of everyone’s time.  Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, while no masterpiece, had lots of Verhoeven’s oddball streak of pulp surrealism and […]

> One of the good things about going to midnight premieres of blockbusters (there aren’t all that many) is that the audience is exactly the group (young, first adopters, eagerly moviegoing) Hollywood is targeting.  A theatre almost entirely composed of that crowd provides a ready-made focus group to gauge how upcoming releases are faring with […]

      THE RAVEN:  Watch It At Home – Not Much Tell-Tale Heart (Or Brain)   Sometimes less-than-great minds think alike, too.  The idea of Edgar Allen Poe as a detective investigating strange phenomena was at the center of ABC’s busted pilot Poe last year (see our pilot report here), but it seems the […]

  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.). […]

  HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS:  Not At Any Price – Audiences Won’t Live Happily Ever After HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS is mostly terrible, but say this for it:  it’s not terrible like anything else out there.  If you’ve always wanted to see an R-rated, gore-ridden, smart-alecky anachronistic fantasy in which fairy tale characters […]

  MONSTERS UNIVERSITY:  Watch It At Home – No Dean’s List For Pixar’s Latest There’s a wonderfully charming, imaginative Pixar movie opening on Friday, one that will restore your faith in the studio’s near-miraculous ability to give life and personality to the most unlikely objects (here including a parking meter and a Walk/Don’t Walk light, […]

  INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS:  Buy A Ticket – 1960s Folk Music A La The Coens INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, which screened as the Closing Night presentation of the AFI Film Festival in advance of its regular run next month, is Joel and Ethan Coen in their enigmatically allegorical mode, but unlike its more overtly stylized predecessors Barton […]