> The first substantial buy of the Toronto Film Festival (Shame had sold first, but for art film prices) turned out to be Salmon Fishing In the Yemen, a modestly engaging romantic comedy from Lasse Hallstrom.  Hallstrom has made a career out of “modestly engaging,” following his early distinction with My Life As a Dog […]

> The fundamental problem with LAY THE FAVORITE, Stephen Frears’ new film that premiered last night at Sundance, is that it’s made by people who seem to have little if any interest in gambling. And since this is a movie about the thrill and especially the business of gambling, that means they don’t have any […]

    ANOTHER EARTH – Worth A Ticket:  Tiny Story With Big Ambitions   For ANOTHER EARTH, the Sundance Film Festival went exactly the way it’s supposed to.  The low-key picture was made on a miniscule budget (a few hundred thousand dollars) by complete unknowns, director/cinematographer/editor/co-writer/co-producer Mike Cahill and star/co-writer/co-producer Brit Marling, with far less […]

  ANONYMOUS:  Watch It At Home – The Bard Was A Beard, Claims Wheezy Expose   ANONYMOUS is history tailored for the 1%. Although screenwriter John Orloff and director Roland Emmerich have swirled it into a complicated tangle of conspiracies and scandals, the idea at the center of Anonymous is simple enough (uh, Spoiler Alert):  […]

  It takes about an hour, but Nicholas McCarthy’s THE PACT, which premiered in the Park City At Midnight section at Sundance, eventually turns out to have a neat twist up its sleeve, one that switches the movie from haunted house horror to an entirely different subgenre of thriller.  And after that, a solid reel […]

ROCK OF AGES:  Watch It At Home – Stop Believin’   No one expects finesse from a movie musical constructed out of songs by Journey, Twisted Sister and Def Leppard.  And, to be certain, the hair-band era of the 80s wasn’t known for its “less is more” aesthetic.  But Adam Shankman’s jukebox musical Glee-ish movie […]

One of the most charming things about Joss Whedon’s new film of MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, unveiled today at the Toronto Film Festival, is that it’s not out to prove anything. Its actors are garbed in modern dress, and there are occasional nods to updating (very possibly as much for budget reasons as anything else, […]

  SKYFALL:  Worth A Ticket – Bond Reborn For years–decades, actually–there have been periodic murmurings that a “real” director would one day take the helm of a James Bond movie.  At various times, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino were among those mentioned, and apparently at least some of them did have discussions with […]