THE LORAX:  Not Even For Free – A Seussian Mess   It may not be pretty, but surely it’s true–Credit must go where credit is due.  In this case, that means the Universal Pictures Marketing Department, which as it turns out has done a splendid job these last few weeks of hiding just […]

  As Alex in A Clockwork Orange would say, this is the real and like tragic part of the story beginning, O my brothers.  After Batman Returns undergrossed Batman by $90M in the US, Warners, you might say, freaked out.  Although everyone was careful to agree that Tim Burton and the studio had mutually parted […]

Oscar buzz has been trailing THE SESSIONS (which was then called The Surrogate) since it was unveiled at Sundance in January, and with good reason.  For Academy members, it doesn’t get much better than a warm “based on a true story” about someone with a serious disability who nevertheless maintains his sense of humor and […]

  The year-end movies are almost all out now (2012’s final limited release, PROMISED LAND, opens on Friday), so here’s a handy capsule guide to what’s worth seeing at the multiplex-and what isn’t.  Just click on the titles for our full reviews. RESERVE YOUR SEATS NOW ZERO DARK THIRTY: Kathryn Bigelow’s (and screenwriter Mark Boal’s) […]

  The old truism that Park City empties out during the second half of the Sundance Film Festival, making it possible to see all the hot titles that premiered at the festival’s start, is far less true than it used to be.  It was impossible to get into the festival’s big buy, The Way, Way […]

  In recent years, the… let’s call it mature audience has been a profitable one, making moderate hits of films like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Quartet.  This holiday season, the title of choice for this niche is likely to be PHILOMENA, a literate tearjerker that Harvey Weinstein unveiled at the Venice and Toronto film festivals. Based on a true […]

  The writer-director Mike Cahill has staked out a unique piece of narrative territory for himself.  In both Another Earth and his new I ORIGINS, which debuted at Sundance last week (and won the festival prize for best science-based work), he explores the point where factual science meets not just science fiction, but something more metaphysical, an area […]

  TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION:  Not Even For Free – Hollywood’s Blockbuster Mentality To the Max Here are just a few of the epic movies with running times shorter than the 165 minutes of TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION:  Apocalypse Now, Avatar, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Bridge On the River Kwai, Boogie Nights and Empire […]