movie reviews
No
Gael Garcia Bernal
Directed by: Pablo Larrain
What if you could stomp on your stronger, meaner, better-financed opponents with a smart ad campaign? No, I'm not talking about the Oscars. I'm talking about No, a stinging, brutally funny satire of modern politics from Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain that ads up to lesson on how to defeat a despot with a Smile button. Ad exec Rene Saavedra (Mexican star Gael Garcia Bernal is stellar) is thrown when his boss Lucho (Alfredo Castro) hands him the unenviable assignment of taking on G... | More »
Safe Haven
Josh Duhamel, Julianne Hough
Directed by: Lasse Hallstrom
How much do I hate this movie? Let me count the ways. I hate the way Hollywood insults audiences by deciding a film version of a Nicholas Sparks bestseller is what audiences need for Valentine's week. I hate the way Sparks-inspired films have gotten exponentially worse since 2004's The Notebook. You want titles? Try Dear John, The Last Song and The Lucky One. I hate that Lasse Hallstrom, the indisputable talent behind My Life As a Dog, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, and The ... | More »
A Good Day to Die Hard
Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney
Directed by: John Moore
Ah jeez. I actually wanted this one to be good. Or at least decent. Or at least a reminder of what got us all fired up about the first Die Hard in 1988. But A Good Day To Die Hard, the fifth in a creatively exhausted series, is total crap. Bruce Willis is back as the NYPD's John McClane. But now he's in Russia to free his son, Jack (Jai Courtney), from the clutches of baddies. Call it Die Hard Does 'Taken'. Of course, Sonny Boy (nicely played by Courtney) is a good guy. B... | More »
Beautiful Creatures
Alden Ehrenreich, Alice Englert, Jeremy Irons, Viola Davis, Emma Thompson
Directed by: Richard LaGravenese
It starts sweetly, kind of. Young love blooms between Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich), a literati wannabe stuck in small-town, small-minded Gatlin, South Carolina, and Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert), a visiting witch. Much is made of the two reading and quoting Kurt Vonnegut, Henry Miller and the street poetry of Charles Bukowski. It's all southern-fried bullshit, of course. The two bond best over pop culture references, such as Lloyd Dobler and his boombox in Say Anything. Ethan has this ... | More »
Side Effects
Rooney Mara, Channing Tatum, Jude Law
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
First the bad news. Oscar winner Steven Soderbergh says Side Effects is the last film he plans to direct (up next, it's all painting, writing, theater and long-form TV). The good news is it's a hell of a thriller, twisty, terrific and packed with surprises you don't see coming. Soderbergh, who handles camera and editing on his films, has a rare gift for taking a familiar genre and filling it with provocations about how we screw up our lives. Just think of sex, lies & videot... | More »
Warm Bodies
Nicholas Hoult
Directed by: Jonathan Levine
There's a problem. By that I mean how can Hollywood make zombies the new vampires? A vamp can be dark, mysterious and romantic (see Twilight). A lurching, hollow-eyed zombie walks around with oozing pustules and rotting flesh (see The Walking Dead). Who wants to hit on that? Warm Bodies solves that problem. Or at least it tries. Nicholas Hoult, the lead zombie, is an extremely appealing actor. Check out Netflix to watch him grow from child (About a Boy) to adult (A Single Man, X-Men: F... | More »
Sound City
Directed by: Dave Grohl
Straight out of a roofraising debut at Sundance 2013 comes Dave Grohl’s exhilarating documentary about what makes life worth living. Hold up. I know Grohl’s film is actually a look at Sound City (1969 - 2011), a studio buried in a corner of Van Nuys, California, as it moves from legend to the analog boneyard. But the Foo Fighters frontman and former Nirvana drummer is up to something more than a nostalgia trip. He wants to celebrate the nondigital sweat that goes into making music... | More »
Bullet to the Head
Sylvester Stallone
Directed by: Walter Hill
Sylvester Stallone shoots people in the face. That's it for subtext in this formula action swill. Why do I sound like I should expect more. Because the credits list the director as Walter Hill. Yes, the Walter Hill who gave us Hard Times, The Long Riders, The Warriors, 48 Hrs., Southern Comfort, Wild Bill and the pilot episode of the landmark HBO Western series Deadwood. Hill's films, the good and even the godawful, show action laced with subtlety and feeling. No rush. You ease into... | More »
Stand Up Guys
Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, Alan Arkin
Directed by: Fisher Stevens
Some actors don't need top-shelf material. Just the pleasure of their company is enough. And so Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin turn the insubstantial Stand Up Guys into solid entertainment. Just watching them riff off one another like a prized jazz combo is a kick. There's Pacino as Val, released from prison after 28 years, but still a target of crime lord Claphands (Mark Margolis), who blames Val for a botched job that killed his son. Claphands sends Doc (Walken) to p... | More »
The Gatekeepers
Directed by: Dror Moreh
So maybe you think it's a snooze to watch a documentary about talking heads yapping about government sanctioned violence. You couldn't be more wrong. In Shin Bet counterterrorism agency, from 1980 to 2011, give shocking and illuminating testimony about the moral obstacle courses you have to run when you claim you're fighting to the death for a lasting peace. Sure, Moreh is talking about Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the granting of Palestinian statehood. But the d... | More »
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