HER:  Buy A Ticket – Tetrabytes of Love From Spike Jonze HER, which was presented at the AFI Film Festival before opening in theatres next month, is the first film Spike Jonze has directed from his own original script, and although its inventiveness recalls Being John Malkovich and Adaptation., the projects on which he collaborated […]

  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 […]

  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 […]

  RUBY SPARKS:  Worth A Ticket – A Narrative Feat   Woody Allen is one of the most influential figures in modern independent film, but his ghost is usually evident in the many romantic comedy-dramas we get each year paying homage to Annie Hall and Manhattan, about hyper-intellectual big-city types who lurch in and out […]

  THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY:  Buy A Ticket – Ben Stiller’s Imaginative, Flawed Reboot Of The Classic Tale The movies Ben Stiller directs for himself (Reality Bites, Zoolander, Tropic Thunder) are nearly always more interesting than the product he churns out as an actor (the Night At the Museum franchise, the Meet the […]

  IT’S A DISASTER:  Worth A Ticket – And They Feel Just (More Or Less) Fine   IT’S A DISASTER is the movie Seeking A Friend For the End of the World aspired, but failed, to be:  a laugh-out-loud, throat-clutching comedy about catastrophe.  Disaster, which premiered at this year’s LA Film Festival, doesn’t yet have […]

  As a movie year, 2013 was awfully slow in getting started.  Hardly anything worth remembering opened all winter and spring–only 1 movie in the Top 10 below opened in theatres before late May.  Summer brought some relief, and then the film festival season that began at the end of August opened the doors wide […]