Movie Reviews
Movies
Iron Man 3 Offers Enough Fun to Keep Series Alive
May 3rd, 2013
A little too much and a little not enough, director and co-writer Shane Black’s Iron Man 3 nonetheless has everything Disney and Marvel need to keep the Avengers superhero constellation shining and regenerating well into the 23rd century. Read more »
Movies
'The Big Wedding' is a Big Bore
Like real weddings, you sit through the event for the sake of the actors involved
April 26th, 2013
The diversions in the ensemble comedy The Big Wedding (that title flat enough for you?) are strictly actor-related, which is usually the case at the movies. For example, the way Diane Keaton selects an asparagus spear at a country club buffet while delivering some dutiful expositional something or other. Or the rumpled panache with which Robert De Niro, playing the Keaton character’s ex-husband, adapts to a different sort of role than he’s used to playing: that of the unreliable horndog trying to get by on charm. Read more »
Movies
'Pain & Gain' is Jacked Up
This is director Michael Bay’s brain on steroids
April 26th, 2013
In America, you’re either a “doer” or a “don’t-er.” So says the hostile motivational speaker played by Ken Jeong, one of several supporting sleazebags tipping around the edges of director Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain. Read more »
Movies
End of Days (and Ideas)
Tom Cruise stars in post-apocalyptic sci-fi rehash 'Oblivion'
April 19th, 2013
Something’s wrong. Tom Cruise, or rather, Jack Harper, his character in the placid new science-fiction adventure Oblivion, can’t shake his dreams of a woman giving him the big eyes on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Read more »
Movies
‘Wonder’ to Behold
Terrance Malick delights in filming picturesque landscapes … and obtuse love triangles
April 19th, 2013
Movies
Robert Redford is Aging But Ageless
The actor must be growing older but it doesn’t seem that way in 'The Company You Keep'
April 12th, 2013
Some actors are lucky. In the third act of their careers, they become dream versions of their own parents, or grandparents. Robert Redford is a slightly different case. Read more »
Movies
'The Place Beyond the Pines' is a Carnival Triptych
Blue Valentine director gives us a three-ring exploration of blue-color masculinity
April 5th, 2013
Movies
By the Book (of the Dead)
'Evil Dead' remake doubles the gore and loses the humor
April 5th, 2013
In the Book of the Dead, the barbed-wire-wrapped volume causing the fuss in Evil Dead, one lavishly illustrated page states that after the forest demon “feasts on five souls, the sky will bleed again.” Read more »
Movies
'G.I. Joe' is a Real American Zero
The movie is like a video game, but without the fun of playing
March 29th, 2013
Right in the middle of G.I. Joe: Retaliation, which is one sort of action movie, there’s another, better one that lasts five or six very good minutes. Read more »
Movies
'Host' of Problems
Stephanie Myers trades vampires for moony, body-snatching aliens
March 29th, 2013
The Host is for people who couldn’t handle the whirlwind pace of events in the Twilight trilogy and who prefer a love triangle unafraid to redefine, for a new generation, the word “lollygag.” Read more »
