movie reviews

May 10, 2012

Dark Shadows

Johnny Depp

Directed by: Tim Burton

If you're not interested in what Johnny Depp and director Tim Burton are cooking up, you're missing out on one of the best go-your-own-way teams in screen history. Dark Shadows, their eighth collaboration to date, doesn't occupy the rarefied air of Ed Wood, Edward Scissorhands and Sweeney Todd. It's too scattershot for the pantheon, but at least as good as Alice and Wonderland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Burton's visuals are a sumptuous treat, as is Depp�... | More »

Under African Skies

Paul Simon

Directed by: Joe Berlinger

By all means check out Joe Berlinger's unmissable Under African Skies, a documentary that shows how Paul Simon defied a U.N. cultural boycott to work in South Africa during apartheid to record his landmark Graceland album in 1985. Simon's virtuosity, intensified by a 2011 reunion concert with the South African musicians who helped him make history, raises the potent and still relevant question of artistic freedom versus realpolitik. Powered by Simon's brilliance, Under African ... | More »

May 4, 2012

A Little Bit of Heaven

Kate Hudson, Gael García Bernal, Kathy Bates

Directed by: Nicole Kassell

Kate Hudson, whose career has been sputtering on life support for years, plays a terminal patient in this droolingly stupid weepie.Useful tip: The movie dies way quicker than she does. | More »

May 3, 2012

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Dev Patel, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson

Directed by: John Madden

The MTV Cribs peeps are probably not clamoring to see this tale of British retirees seeking a retirement haven in India. But screw them if they don't give a damn about watching Brit acting royalty nailing every nuance in this comedy laced with genuine emotion. Adapted by Ol Parker from a novel by Deborah Moggach, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel begins by lining up its cast of quirky characters. There's widowed, financially strapped Evelyn (Judi Dench), bigoted Muriel (Maggie Smith), ... | More »

April 30, 2012

The Avengers

Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Evans, Tom Hiddleston

Directed by: Joss Whedon

Let me sprint right to the point: The Avengers has it all. And then some. Six superheroes for the price of one ticket: Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye, Black Widow and the Hulk. It's also the blockbuster I saw in my head when I imagined a movie that brought together the idols of the Marvel world in one shiny, stupendously exciting package. It's Transformers with a brain, a heart and a working sense of humor. Suck on that, Michael Bay. All hail the warrior king of this dizz... | More »

April 26, 2012

Bernie

Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine, Matthew McConaughey

Directed by: Richard Linklater

Texas-born Richard Linklater is one of those rare filmmakers whose work never fails to fascinate. Unconvinced? Here's a few titles: Slacker, Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Waking Life, School of Rock, A Scanner Darkly, Fast Food Nation, Me and Orson Welles. Now let's get on with his latest spellbinder. Bernie is based on a true story. It really is. Want just the facts? Here goes: In 1997, in the town of Carthage, Texas, the body of rich, notoriously bitchy widow... | More »

The Five-Year Engagement

Jason Segel, Emily Blunt

Directed by: Nicholas Stoller

IMAO (that's "In My Arrogant Opinion"), actor-writer Jason Segel and director-writer Nicholas Stoller crafted a sublime romantic soufflé in 2008's Forgetting Sarah Marshall. That dream partnership gets dinged a bit in the frustratingly uneven The Five-Year Engagement, which drags and sags at 124 minutes. Luckily, the movie never runs on sitcom empty. How could it, with a terrific cast, led by Segel as San Francisco sous chef Tom Solomon and the delectable Emil... | More »

Safe

Jason Statham

Directed by: Boaz Yakin

"Luke Wright, the Big Apple's hardest cop – once upon a time." That's the line in the promo for Safe that's meant to get your blood up. Global action icon Jason Statham plays Luke Wright in Safe, so you know this cop is not going down easily. And that's the trouble with Safe: You know where it's going every step of the way. Statham, the British Olympic-diver-turned-actor, knows the testosterone overload his audience wants of him, and he delivers big-time. The th... | More »

The Raven

John Cusack, Alice Eve

Directed by: James McTeigue

There's a promising premise on the boil here. What if Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) spent the last days of his life trying to nab a serial killer who's been using macabre ideas from Poe's short stories to off his victims? The Pit and the Pendulum, anyone? OK, The Raven sounds like a TV series that gets canceled soon after its debut. But it has compensations, chief of which is John Cusack, who plays Poe with just the right blend of romantic longing and tortuous doubt. Director Ja... | More »

April 19, 2012

The Lucky One

Zac Efron, Taylor Schilling

Directed by: Scott Hicks

Consider yourself lucky if this review is the closest you get to the contamination known as The Lucky One. Ever since 2004's The Notebook became the default choice in chick flicks, based solely on the heat generated by Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, the weepie-creepy bestsellers of Nicholas Sparks have ignited a plague of Hollywood tearjerkers. The Lucky One is the latest Sparks assault. Is it the worst of the seven screen Sparks so far? Nope. My vote still goes to 2009's The Last... | More »