DESPICABLE ME 2:  Watch It At Home – Good-Hearted If Unexciting Sequel For the Kids Despicable Me was far from the most ambitious or striking animated feature of the last few years, but it was definitely cute.  It told the story of supervillain Gru (voiced by Steve Carell), a Scrooge type with an unplaceable […]

  THE LONE RANGER:  Not Even For Free – The Silver Bullet Is Self-Inflicted Disney’s reluctance to produce THE LONE RANGER is well-documented; the studio even shut down the production shortly before shooting was to begin in order to force producer Jerry Bruckheimer, producer/director Gore Verbinski and producer/star Johnny Depp to slim down the production […]

  THE HEAT:  Watch It At Home – A Functional Vehicle for Two Strong Stars Let’s face it:  it doesn’t really matter what THE HEAT is about.  A streetwise Boston cop, a straight-laced FBI agent, some crimes that need solving, teamwork imposed on the pair, hostility that turns gradually into friendship, a few mutual life […]

  WHITE HOUSE DOWN:  Worth A Ticket – Things Go “Boom”; We Go “Yay” WHITE HOUSE DOWN is wondrously stupid, so merrily, spectacularly idiotic that it washes the taste of Olympus Has Fallen and its grim mediocrity right out of your mouth.  Even though the threat of nuclear annihilation is waved around, and many random […]

  WORLD WAR Z:  Watch It At Home – Third Act Heroics, In More Ways Than One The travails of WORLD WAR Z on the way to the screen have been widely discussed, and in the end the misshapen, Frankenstein-like $200M (plus marketing costs) assembly of various genres, writers, editors and re-shoots are something of […]

  MONSTERS UNIVERSITY:  Watch It At Home – No Dean’s List For Pixar’s Latest There’s a wonderfully charming, imaginative Pixar movie opening on Friday, one that will restore your faith in the studio’s near-miraculous ability to give life and personality to the most unlikely objects (here including a parking meter and a Walk/Don’t Walk light, […]

  MAN OF STEEL:  Watch It At Home – Another Guy In a Cape “Kneel before Zod!” the villain of that name roared in what’s probably the best-remembered piece of dialogue from Superman 2.  That line isn’t in the new MAN OF STEEL, but its filmmakers seem at times to have incorporated it into their attitude toward […]

  THIS IS THE END:  Worth A Ticket – Apocalypse Right Now Imagine an dystopian mumblecore extravaganza populated mostly by the Judd Apatow stock company, and you’ll have an idea of what to expect from THIS IS THE END.  Almost inevitably self-indulgent and uneven, the directing debut of Seth Rogen and his writing partner/BFF Evan […]