movie reviews
Zero Dark Thirty
Jessica Chastain
Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow
Hang on tight. The knockout punch of the movie season is being delivered by Zero Dark Thirty. You're in for a hell of a ride with this high-voltage thriller that digs with shocking gravity into the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden. Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal top their Oscar-winning work in The Hurt Locker by exposing the raw feelings still simmering after 9/11. The film opens with voices in the towers crying for help. It ends on May 2nd, 2011, when Navy SEAL... | More »
Jack Reacher
Tom Cruise
Directed by: Christopher McQuarrie
You can join the bitch squad and complain that five-foot-seven Tom Cruise has no business playing Jack Reacher, the six-five, 250-pound bruiser of an ex-military cop who walks tall and carries a big grudge against authority in Lee Child's novels (17 to date). Or you can let the physical stuff go and admit that Cruise is good in the role, damn good. At 50, Cruise has a physical dexterity that makes you believe he can mix it up with five guys in a fight scene, take his lumps and still win... | More »
On the Road
Kristen Stewart, Garrett Hedlund, Sam Riley
Directed by: Walter Salles
A dash of Tarantino might have juiced up Walter Salles’ wrongheadedly well-mannered take on Jack Kerouac’s 1957 Beat Generation landmark. Kerouac’s semi-autobiographical novel comes to the screen looking good but feeling shallow. Kerouac, here called Sal Paradise and played by Sam Riley, hits the road with his pals to find a non-conformist America spiked by drugs, jazz and poetry. Hey, man. Sal’s life spins around Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund), a restless thrill-see... | More »
The Impossible
Naomi Watts, Tom Holland
Directed by: J.A. Bayona
Prepare to be shaken by this true story of a family that stays together when everything is stacked against them. By that I mean the Indian Ocean tsunami that wreaked havoc on Thailand in 2004. British exec Henry Bennett (Ewan McGregor) and his doctor wife, Maria (Naomi Watts), had brought their three sons there for a vacation getaway. But as tidal waves rise to 100 feet, Maria and oldest son Lucas (Tom Holland) are separated from Henry and their two younger sons, Thomas (Samuel Joslin) and Si... | More »
This Is 40
Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann
Directed by: Judd Apatow
Judd Apatow makes comedies that count. He knows that staying true to character is the best way to make humor a portal to deeper feelings. Apatow didn't have to look closer than home to find his inspiration for the high-spirited, hilarious and surprisingly prickly This Is 40. Paul Rudd, as Pete, and Leslie Mann, as Debbie, are reprising the supporting roles they had in Apatow's Knocked Up five years ago. But this time Pete and Debbie are in the center ring. And since Apatow is marrie... | More »
Not Fade Away
John Magaro, James Gandolfini, Jack Huston
Directed by: David Chase
You expect a hot dose of bada-bing, what with David Chase, creator of HBO's groundbreaking crime drama The Sopranos, making his feature debut as a writer-director. Instead, Chase offers a gritty, graceful salute to rock & roll. Like Douglas (John Magaro), his film's protagonist, Chase grew up in suburban New Jersey in the 1960s playing covers of Buddy Holly and the Stones in his garage. Unlike Douglas, Chase never went farther than his garage. But the impact of the music, the wa... | More »
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Martin Freeman, Ian McKellan, Andy Serkis
Directed by: Peter Jackson
Part One of director Peter Jackson's planned film trilogy of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit forces audiences to run an obstacle course before the fun kicks in. First, you need to get past the look of it. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is making a bizarre kind of history by going out in limited release at 48 frames per second (double the usual standard). Couple that with 3D and the movie looks so hyper-real that you see everything that's fake about it, from painted sets to pro... | More »
Django Unchained
Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Christoph Waltz
Directed by: Quentin Tarantino
Welcome to alternative History 101 with Professor Quentin Tarantino. In his last class, cataloged as Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino burned down the damn Third Reich, Hitler included. This time, with Django Unchained, he lines up slave traders so a black man can blow their fool heads off. Fuck the facts. Like Sergio Corbucci, who directed the first Django (starring Franco Nero), in 1966, Tarantino obeys the only commandment that counts in exploitation movies: Anything goes. Who else but Tara... | More »
Amour
Emmanuelle Riva, Jean-Louis Trintignant
Directed by: Michael Haneke
The title is french for love. The movie itself, indisputably the year's best foreign-language film and an Oscar front-runner, defines what love is. And it does it the hard way. No sex, drugs or rock & roll. Just two people offering each other total commitment. Did I mention both are in their eighties? Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) are retired music teachers living comfortably in Paris, with occasional visits from their daughter (Isabelle Huppert). Then A... | More »
Hyde Park on Hudson
Bill Murray, Laura Linney
Directed by: Roger Michell
The great Bill Murray looks ready to take on the challenge of playing the polio-stricken Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Hyde Park on Hudson. He's got the look, the charm, the gravitas and the mischief. But his buoyant performance can't lift the leaden script by playwright Richard Nelson and the mis-direction of Roger Michell (Notting Hill). The movie, set in Hyde Park, New York, at Springwood (the Roosevelt family’s country estate), generates all the excitement of a stifle... | More »
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