THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY – Watch It At Home – A Long, Slow Trek Through Middle-Earth As a devotee of the Tolkien canon, Peter Jackson is obviously responsive to sage words of wisdom and well-worn adages.  Here’s one he should have considered:  Quit While You’re Ahead.  But first, let’s talk about HFR. The […]

  If you go to too many Sundances, or see too many indie films, there are certain templates you come to recognize all too quickly.  THE LIFEGUARD, written and directed by Liz W. Garcia, a TV writer (Memphis Beat, Cold Case) making her directing debut, follows so many of these conventions that it could have […]

  NOW YOU SEE ME:  Watch It At Home – Don’t Look Too Closely A summer action movie, like a magic act, is only as good as its final trick, and the one in the relatively low-budget NOW YOU SEE ME (which this season means something under $100M) is fairly entertaining–not impossible to foresee, if […]

  THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ELEANOR RIGBY: HIM & HER is an extraordinary feature debut for its writer/director Ned Benson.  Indeed, it’s so remarkable that it comes close to not needing the modifier “debut” to express how good it is–if Benson hadn’t bitten off a bit more than he could chew, this would have been one (or […]

  X-MEN:  DAYS OF FUTURE PAST:  Buy A Ticket – For Once, The Script Is As Mighty As the CG After the money-making meatball that was Godzilla, X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST serves welcome notice that a movie can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, be crammed with CG-generated spectacle, and still have room for an […]

  The director Denis Villenueve has been staking out some interesting Hollywood territory for himself.  His new SICARIO, which debuted at Cannes and screened at the Toronto Film Festival prior to arriving in theatres next week, is, like his previous Prisoners, a serious adult thriller that demands audience attention and doesn’t compromise its dramatic principles, […]

  KODACHROME (no distrib):  AKA that page of the indie movie playbook marked “Dysfunctional Family Road Trip To Redemption.”  Jonathan Tropper (This Is Where I Leave You) wrote the script, and it has his novels’ mix of damaged-man soap and rom-com.  This one features a dying dad (Ed Harris), who has the kind of incurable […]

  AFTER THE WEDDING (no distrib):  The Danish 2006 After the Wedding, which won that year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, was shot by director Suzanne Biers in the then-trendy Dogma style, heavy on pseudo-verite camerawork and lighting that imparted a sense of immediacy to the drama.  Bart Freundlich’s English-language remake dispenses with that style entirely.  […]