ZERO DARK THIRTY:  Worth A Ticket – The Year’s Most Gripping Thriller Is True You already know how ZERO DARK THIRTY ends.  You knew how All the President’s Men ended, too, and Apollo 13 and Titanic.  Great drama doesn’t require M. Night Shyamalan-esque surprise endings, or twisty, tricky narrative structure.  Sometimes the most satisfying […]

  MARVELOUS AND THE BLACK HOLE:  Goodhearted YA comfort food.  Kate Tsang’s feature debut is about 13-year old Sammy (Miya Cech), who has become surly and rebellious toward her father Angus (Leonardo Nam) and sister Patricia (Kannon Omachi) since the death of her mother.  Things become even worse when potential stepmother Marianne (Paulina Lule) enters […]

  Worth a ticket.   It’s a little mysterious that Michael Connelly’s trim, twisty crime novels have so rarely hit the screen. Perhaps it was the tepid reception received by Blood Work in 2002, unfortunately one of Clint Eastwood’s more dismal films of the last decade. Or just the usual horror stories of movie industry […]

  ZOOKEEPER – Not Even For Free:  Isn’t There An ASPCA For Audiences?   Let’s put off talking about ZOOKEEPER–it’s terrible, for those with no time to spare–by mentioning the trailer for Adam Sandler’s upcoming Jack & Jill that’s attached to it (both movies are produced by Sandler’s production company Happy Madison and released by […]

    THE WOMAN IN BLACK:  Watch It At Home – Fun, But Creaky As Its Doors   THE WOMAN IN BLACK is so aggressively old-fashioned it sometimes feels like the horror movie version of The Artist.  A haunted house story in the grand style, it may be in color and wide-screen, but its heart […]

  DALLAS BUYERS CLUB is more Erin Brockovich than Brian’s Song, and that’s why it works so well.  Jean-Marc Vallee’s film, written by Craig Borten and Melisa Walack, is too angry to be sentimental.  Set during the 1980s, it tells the story of Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey, in a career-highlight performance), a hard-living, homophobic Texas electrician and rodeo rider […]

  Lorene Scafaria’s THE MEDDLER spins its way past so many potential crash sites that it’s practically an example of cinematic stunt-driving.  The premise itself is something out of a thousand terrible sitcoms:  the widowed mom of the title, Marnie (Susan Sarandon), is so desperate to micro-manage her daughter’s life that she moves from New […]

  Few movies are as wholeheartedly dedicated to meta-ness as Martin McDonagh’s SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS.  The title of the movie is also the title of the script its main character Marty (Colin Farrell)–which, I believe, is short for “Martin”–is trying to write.  It’s also a tally that the movie keeps track of as the story moves […]