movie reviews
Man of Steel
Henry Cavill, Amy Adams
Directed by: Zack Snyder
Oh, crap, not again with the flying dude in the cape and the red booties. Didn't director Bryan Singer already pay due diligence in 2006's Superman Returns with Brandon Routh? The box office can't be the only reason to revive a franchise. "We needed to juice him up," admits director Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen). I'll say. With Batman getting all the bad-boy love, Supie needed to roughen his do-gooder image. And here he is in Man of Steel, directed by Snyder, with story inp... | More »
20 Feet From Stardom
Directed by:
Why should you see a documentary about backup singers? One look at the electrifying 20 Feet From Stardom and you'll have the answer, that is, after you stop cheering. Lend your eyes and ears to the likes of Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer and Tata Vega, and get ready to revise your definition of what a star is. Director Morgan Neville and producer Gil Friesen (the A&M Records exec who died last year) have rightly gone into the shadows to shine a light on sheer perfection. M... | More »
The Bling Ring
Emma Watson, Katie Chang, Israel Broussard
Directed by: Sofia Coppola
It could have been one of those ripped-from-the-headlines quickies you see on subpar cable. Instead, The Bling Ring plugs into the zeitgeist of trash culture and sparks like a live wire. Sofia Coppola's fact-based film about a crew of SoCal teens who started robbing the likes of Paris and LiLo (Hilton and Lohan, to the enviably uninitiated) in 2008 is up to more compelling business than pointing fingers and acting superior. Thanks to social media and reality TV, we're all getting ha... | More »
This Is The End
Seth Rogen, James Franco
Directed by: Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg
There are scary things in This Is the End. Way scary. Take the rampaging egos of Seth Rogen, James Franco, Danny McBride, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Craig Robinson, Jason Segel and Jay Baruchel, who all play appallingly funny versions of themselves as Hollywood stoners facing the end of days by partying down at Franco's house. To top that, there are aliens in this movie, monsters ready to chomp on celebrity meat – that is, when they're not destroying Earth. Rogen and his Super... | More »
The Internship
Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson
Directed by: Shawn Levy
Horndog wedding crashers Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson go soft in The Internship, a flabby farce that might win a pass at the box office because it's just so cute and family friendly. But where's your edge, guys? Where are the laughs that walk a tightrope? Vaughn and Wilson are possessed of an apparently ageless comic chemistry. But they stay in the safe zone here, playing L.A. wristwatch salesmen in a world where smartphones tell you what time it is. Billy (Vaughn) and Nick (Wilson)... | More »
The Purge
Ethan Hawke
Directed by: James DeMonaco
It's 2022. and in the u.s. crime is at an all-time low. Why? Once a year, for 12 hours, the government condones robbery, rape and murder. Apparently, an annual purge clears our heads. Mr. President, are you listening? It's a nifty premise, if you don't think about it much. God knows James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) can deal with it. He's making a killing selling home-security systems. During that 12-hour period, he locks up his wife (Lena Headey) and two kids (Adelaide Kane and ... | More »
Much Ado About Nothing
Nathan Fillion, Amy Acker
Directed by: Joss Whedon
If you were Joss Whedon, coming off Marvel’s The Avengers (the third-highest-grossing movie ever), what would you do next? Shakespeare, of course. Whedon talked a few actor pals into his Santa Monica home and spent 12 days shooting a shoestring update of Much Ado About Nothing, in black-and-white, yet. Did his management team not stage an intervention? Luckily, no. Much Ado might make fans of Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly think they’ve wandered into th... | More »
Tiger Eyes
Willa Holland, Tatanka Means
Directed by: Lawrence Blume
Sometimes taking it easy is all it takes. In adapting Judy Blume's 1981 bestseller, Tiger Eyes, to the screen, director Lawrence Blume (her son and script collaborator) lets the emotions inherent in this coming-of-age tale stay at a welcome distance from Hollywood slick. Good job. Judy Blume, whose young adult novels have generated sales exceeding 80 million copies since she first hit print in 1969, is more than a literary force of nature. She's a groundbreaker, a renegade with the ... | More »
After Earth
Will Smith, Jaden Smith
Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
After Earth merits comparison with 2000's Battlefield Earth, John Travolta's godawful film tribute to the sci-fi novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Yes, it's that bad. This time poor, ravaged Earth, uninhabitable by humans, is occupied by predatory birds, monkeys and tacky computer-generated aliens. So what are Will Smith, 44, and his son Jaden Smith, 14, doing there? Ask Big Willie, he dreamed up the story. What we see on screen, with a sodden script co-written by Ga... | More »
Now You See Me
Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher
Directed by: Louis Leterrier
It takes a certain dark magic to make the talent of a top cast (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco, Mark Ruffalo, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman) disappear right before your eyes. Now You See Me, directed on hack-attack mode by Louis Leterrier (Clash of the Titans, The Incredible Hulk) from a false-promises script by Ed Solomon, Boaz Yakin and Edward Ricourt, does just that. It sucks us in with real flair as Eisenberg, Harrelson, Franco and Fisher take the stage as The ... | More »
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