After the gigantic success of Batman, Tim Burton went on to direct Edward Scissorhands, which although naturally a smaller level of hit, was enormously important to Burton’s career, because it was a very personal project that didn’t seem likely to find a mainstream audience at all, let alone be one of the year’s top […]

  It’s been 23 years since the pre-Christopher Nolan version of the Batman franchise launched into the boxoffice stratosphere, and a lot has changed in the movie landscape.  (1989 is so long ago that it was a topical gag in the movie to cast Gotham City’s Mayor with an actor who looked like New York’s […]

  ICE AGE:  CONTINENTAL DRIFT – Watch It At Home – The CSI of Family Franchises Does Its Thing   You know what the fabulous Peter Dinklage never gets to do on Game of Thrones?  Sing!  That’s remedied in the new 3D animated ICE AGE:  CONTINENTAL DRIFT, where as the voice of monkey pirate Captain […]

  THE MAGIC OF BELLE ISLE:  In Limited Theatrical Release and on VOD – If Nothing Else Is On   Few recent Hollywood career trajectories have been as puzzling as Rob Reiner’s.  From 1984-1992, Reiner directed This Is Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally…, Mercy and […]

  SAVAGES:  Watch It At Home – Great Book, OK Movie Don Winslow’s novel SAVAGES is one of the extraordinary reads of recent years.  The plot may sound unremarkable–a mini-war is waged between a couple of Orange County drug dealers and a Mexican cartel–but the words “gripping” and “page-turning” don’t do justice to Winslow’s prose, […]

  THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN:  Watch It At Home – Not So Amazing   Part of the unwritten suspension of disbelief deal we have with the movie studios is that although we know they’re going to constantly tell us new versions of the same old stories for as long as we’ll buy tickets, they won’t abuse […]

  TED:  Watch It At Home – More Than a TV Show, Less Than a Movie   With TED, Seth MacFarlane makes his move to the big screen from a spectacularly successful career in adult-oriented TV animation, steering most of FOX’s non-Simpsons “animation domination” line-up with Family Guy, American Dad and The Cleveland Show.  More significantly, though, Ted marks his first […]

  MAGIC MIKE:  Worth A Ticket – Soderbergh Again Earns His Crumpled Dollars   Although he hasn’t appeared in any of the year’s giant action blockbusters (GI Joe 2, probably not that giant anyway, was postponed to next year), 2012 could well be remembered as the year of Channing Tatum.  He’s had 3 major hits in […]