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 title ZIPPER suggests something wittier and more enticing than Mora Stephens’ well-made melodrama turns out to be.  If a filmmaker is determined to reexamine the familiar story of a politician who can’t control his own personal excesses, some kind of new take or distinctive angle is advisable, but Stephens and her co-writer Joel Viertel […]

  THE WAY, WAY BACK:  Watch It At Home – Modestly Engaging Coming-Of-Age Tale THE WAY, WAY BACK is one of the last real indie hopes for a original breakout hit this summer (it was a big buy out of Sundance, a $10M purchase by Fox Searchlight, the studio behind the Sundance smash Little Miss […]

BRAVE:  Watch It At Home – Pixar Out Of Its Element   A spunky young animated princess is suffocated by her domineering mom, and her efforts to break free lead to all sorts of unintended chaos… Wasn’t Tangled a lot of fun?  Pixar’s new BRAVE has gotten lots of attention for being the studio’s first […]

  TRANCE:  Watch It At Home – Tricky But Unsatisfying Thriller From Danny Boyle TRANCE is both extremely clever and remarkably stupid.  I wish I could explain exactly how, but Danny Boyle’s thriller, written by John Hodge and Joe Ahearne, has the kind of story that piles reversals on twists on reveals, so there’s not […]

> THE CABIN IN THE WOODS:  Watch it At Home – Clever and Culty Seeing THE CABIN IN THE WOODS is sort of like being in Fight Club:  the first rule is not to talk about it.  Or, at least, not to reveal any of the wild, ingenious twists put into place by its producer/co-writer […]

> Watch It At Home:  Petty larceny. Sometimes casting can be too good:  Keanu Reeves playing a guy who pretty much sleepwalks through his own life is practically redundant.  His whole style, from the very start of his career in the Bill and Ted pictures (more than 20 years ago!), has been to lag a […]

  THELMA (no distrib):  In recent years, we’ve seen the rise of what might uncharitably be called Old Lady Cinema, noisy comedies like the Book Club franchise and 80 For Brady that milk gags out of the spectacle of actresses of a certain age talking about (and even engaging in) sex and some light drug […]