THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2: Watch It At Home – The Webs Aren’t Very Tight This Time The huge, lumbering pieces of THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 rarely succeed in fitting together. It’s as though the studio and filmmakers–director Marc Webb and screenwriters Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Jeff Pinkner (plus co-story writer James Vanderbilt)–started with […]
GLASS ONION (Netflix – November 4 in theaters, December 23 online): After Rian Johnson’s Knives Out broke through to become one of the increasingly few non-IP-based mainstream hits in the market ($311.6M worldwide), Netflix moved aggressively to buy out the franchise, reportedly paying $450M for the next 2 crime-solving adventures of detective Benoit Blanc […]
MEN IN BLACK 3: Watch It At Home – $250M Worth of “OK” After years of development, a famously troubled production, untold rewrites and a budget that even Sony admits is around $250M (meaning $400M+ with marketing), MEN IN BLACK 3 is… fine. Proficient and professional, neither inspired nor demanding, containing a few chuckles, […]
Sundance is sometimes thrilling, but it can also be an ordeal. Especially when the films are good, but not great. And even more so if you arrive with limited tickets, and are left to the tender mercies of the Wait List lines (which, given Sundance’s idiosyncratic approach to Wait Lists, requires standing on each […]
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 […]
THE INCREDIBLE BURT WONDERSTONE: Not Even For Free – While You’re Watching… Poof! It’s Gone It would have been a neat trick if Steve Carell could have pulled off as clear a Will Ferrell role as the lead in THE INCREDIBLE BURT WONDERSTONE. But Ferrell’s brand of flamboyant, childish, deluded yet vulnerable vaingloriousness just […]
R.I.P.D.: Not Even For Free – No Life After Death For This One Ryan Reynolds plays a dead man in the new R.I.P.D., and thus it makes sense that his character would be frustrated and depressed for much of its length, but watching him, you almost feel like his glumness is a message to […]
AMERICAN HUSTLE: Buy A Ticket – David O. Russell’s Epic Romp Is a Party That Goes On Till Dawn Even though it’s concerned with con men, low-lifes and deluded losers, AMERICAN HUSTLE is the happiest movie in town. The co-writer/director David O. Russell seems intoxicated with life’s utter craziness and the joy of moviemaking; […]