movie reviews
Quartet
Maggie Smith
Directed by: Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Hoffman may be late to the party, making his debut as a director at 75. But the guy's a natural. It's Hollywood that's selling plastics. Hoffman uses all he's learned as a virtuoso actor to shape a film of flesh-and-blood characters, flushed with humor and tenderness. The defiantly funny and touching Quartet, based on a play by Ronald Harwood (The Dresser), concerns opera musicians living a not-so-vida-loca in a cozy retirement home in the British countryside. Illne... | More »
Promised Land
Matt Damon
Directed by: Gus Van Sant
Known as the anti-fracking movie by people who aren't paying attention, Promised Land is actually a potent and powerful look at how the stressed economy is stressing farm communities across America. Matt Damon stars as a corporate suit offering the promise of big bucks to farmers in exchange for rights to drill for natural gas on their land. John Krasinski, who wrote the heartfelt script with Damon, plays the activist trying to stop him. Out of that conflict, director Gus Van Sant finds ... | More »
Les Misérables
Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, Russell Crowe
Directed by: Tom Hooper
No one expects gutsy filmmaking in a musical. But that's just what King's Speech Oscar winner Tom Hooper delivers in Les Misérables. The massive 1980s stage smash is adapted from Victor Hugo's even more massive 1862 novel spun around the 1832 Paris student uprising. There's no spoken dialogue! Everyone sings! All the time! For nearly three hours! Think rock opera, like the Who's Tommy. If that drives you nuts, screw off and see the stupid Twilight finale again.... | More »
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 »
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