> Whit Stillman has one of the most distinctive voices in American film, and his 13-year absence from the screen barely shows in his new comedy DAMSELS IN DISTRESS; it feels as though, had it been made immediately after The Last Days of Disco in 1998, nothing about it would be the slightest bit different. […]
THAT AWKWARD MOMENT: Watch It At Home – Low-Impact Rom-Com If you heard that a new indie movie featured the stars of the past 2 years’ back-to-back Sundance sensations, Michael B. Jordan from 2013’s Fruitvale Station and Miles Teller from this year’s Whiplash, would you be intrigued? What if Zac Efron was the other […]
Click on SHOWBUZZDAILY‘s reviews from this year’s Sundance Film Festival, in alphabetical order: 2 DAYS IN NEW YORK (Magnolia) BACHELORETTE (No Distrib) BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD (Fox Searchlight) CELESTE AND JESSE FOREVER (Sony Pictures Classics) COMPLIANCE (Magnolia) FILLY BROWN (No Distrib) THE FIRST TIME (No Distrib) FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL… (Focus) […]
ICE AGE: CONTINENTAL DRIFT – Watch It At Home – The CSI of Family Franchises Does Its Thing You know what the fabulous Peter Dinklage never gets to do on Game of Thrones? Sing! That’s remedied in the new 3D animated ICE AGE: CONTINENTAL DRIFT, where as the voice of monkey pirate Captain […]
THE CAMPAIGN: Not At Any Price – Abstain THE CAMPAIGN, like many a politician before it, tries to be all things to all people, and winds up delivering almost nothing. There was reason to be hopeful about The Campaign, mostly because its director, Jay Roach, seemed to embody exactly the mix the movie was […]
THE WOLF OF WALL STREET: Buy A Ticket – Scorsese’s Boisterous Epic of Bottomless Greed The key sequence in Martin Scorsese’s THE WOLF OF WALL STREET arrives about 2 hours into its 3-hour length. (No meaningful spoilers here.) The resoundingly crooked financier Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his equally bent sidekick Donnie Azoff (Jonah […]
ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER – Not Even For Free – An Unconstitutional Offense Against Moviegoers Honestly: how is a movie called ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER not a comedy? It’s as if Woody Allen had given the title Bananas to his film Interiors–it makes no sense. And yet, Timur Bekmambetov’s picture, and presumably the source […]
ENDLESS LOVE: Not Even For Free – Hopeless Wreck Truly: why does this new ENDLESS LOVE exist? Even on the crassest commercial level, it makes very little sense. The 1981 Franco Zeffirelli/Brooke Shields/Martin Hewitt version is remembered as neither good nor particularly successful (it made only half as much as Shields’ Blue Lagoon had […]