I've had women on the brain at the movies lately, and we are out there in significant numbers this season along with the boys of summer. I happened to see two sequels MAD MAX: FURY ROAD and PITCH PERFECT 2 on the same day and fully expected to tolerate the former and enjoy the latter. Not even close. PITCH "imperfect" began with a crude joke, meandered [...]
Here's a double feature at the movies-- you'll love beginning with THE AGE OF ADALINE. The film stars the beautiful Blake Lively as a woman named Adeline Bowman who was born at the beginning of the 20th century and hasn't aged a day since she was 29! Her secret? A car accident during a surprise snowstorm followed by [...]
Imagine Jane Fonda as a Jewish mother. If you can do that, you'll love THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU. Now imagine that Fonda's children are Tina Fey, Jason Bateman, Adam Driver and Corey Stoll, siblings who all return home --with spouses, kids, girlfriends in tow--after their father has died, and sit shiva for seven [...]
The best movie I've seen all summer is LIFE ITSELF, a documentary about one of the most formidable movie critics in history-- and certainly the most famous, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and conqueror of cancer: Roger Ebert. The disease killed him, but Roger won. At the beginning of his memoir, Roger wrote, "I was [...]
I cannot say enough about ENOUGH SAID-- one of the best films at the movies right now! It's an authentic, charming, tenderly-acted but unsentimental tale about grown-ups falling in love. Yes-- grown-ups, a pair of middle-aged divorcees played by the late James Gandolfini (to whom the film is dedicated) and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Albert and Eva meet [...]
PRISONERS is one of the best films I've seen at the movies in weeks. It pops like a kernel in a myriad ways--full of nooks and crannies, threatening & thrilling, sad & shocking, and just plain entertaining. I followed this thriller about two little girls who disappear on Thanksgiving Day-- right down a very dark [...]
I have just seen the first OSCAR WORTHY performance by an actress this year-- or any year: Cate Blanchett in BLUE JASMINE--Woody's latest and absolutely one of his best films, ever. It's become a cliche that writer/director Woody Allen's work had hit the doldrums critically for a bit, and lately, everything he's doing has been [...]
The Oscars are Feb 24, and over the next few days there are few "Oscar" films I need to catch you up on before the big event! See a French film called AMOUR which won this year's Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and is among this year's nine Oscar nominees for Best Picture. [...]
In a season that features at least one remarkable presidential portrayal--here comes another, and this one definitely the wackier. An Irish/Englishman playing Lincoln is one thing, but America's unofficial court jester and one time king of Caddy Shack is another kettle of acting entirely. Once you get over the shock of seeing Bill Murray as [...]
The most ravishing movie of the season is ANNA KARENINA , novelist Leo Tolstoy's sweeping pageant of love, marriage, passion, family, God, nature, and the constraints of class and society in 19th century Russia. The elegantly beautiful Keira Knightley stars as ANNA KARENINA who falls in love with a young, rich, good-looking cavalry officer, Count Vronsky. [...]
