I've been without power for three days and could barely wait to post this-- I finally saw one of the BEST MOVIES out there right now: MARGIN CALL which portrays a long hard day in the life of an investment banking house -- not just any day-- the day in September 2008 when all the financial houses [...]
IT JUST OPENED! Don't miss MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE, a dark and unrelenting psychological thriller starring Elizabeth Olsen--younger sister of Mary Kate and Ashley. If her performance here as a traumatized cult survivor is any indication, Elizabeth will henceforth stand on her own merit. The 23 year-old Olsen is built for screen stardom; lean yet [...]
THE BIG YEAR is a small miracle of a movie. It makes watching birds downright THRILLING! From pipits to plovers, bobolinks to boobies, gulls to godwits, and titmice to tanagers -- stop me before I go cuckoo...THE BIG YEAR is a quietly funny, absorbing flight of fancy that made my heart take wing! I, who [...]
This Saturday is your last chance to see a New England Premiere over at the SpeakEasy Stage: their excellent production of 2010 Tony nominee for best play NEXT FALL! The drama pivots on the relationship between Adam, an atheist, and Luke a practicing Christian. It's about the complexities of love and religion, the nature of [...]
THE IDES OF MARCH is one smart, streamlined, and brutally transparent political thriller that doesn't so much tell us what we didn't already know, but rather gobsmacks us again with one of the oldest stories in the world. As the unsuspecting Julius Caesar discovered in 44BC, there's a fine line between enemies and friends, ambition [...]
I just became a contributor to EXHALE magazine and here's my first article all about the Fall Movie Season beginning with 50/50! (Ironically I am also a 3X cancer survivor, and am the subject of a separate feature story in the same issue of EXHALE about that experience.) Now that the car crashes of summer [...]
Perhaps the Red Sox should take a break, take a field trip, and see if the solution to their colossal and historic implosion can be found at the movies in the entertaining new film MONEYBALL. The movie champions those who challenge the conventional wisdom -- the ho-hummers who always say, "But that's how we've always done [...]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBiOF3y1W0Y DRIVE just about drove me crazy. I was so driven to distraction after seeing it-- I nearly drove off the road. This is one of the best films I've experienced all year, an existential action thriller--To Drive, is To Be-- and it should drive its leading man Ryan Gosling straight to the Oscars. The movie took [...]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSi3LdUrq18 I DON'T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT--but I sure wish the filmmakers had figured out how to make it look as hard as it is. Instead, the movie feels unimportant, and worse-- dated! The movie is based on the best-seller of the same name written by Allison Pearson, wife of NEW YORKER film critic [...]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sYSyuuLk5g CONTAGION begins with a mounting sense of dis-ease, which spreads like a virus through the all-star, "Oscar" infused cast as each one plays his or her part in what is about to become a pandemic! The tension mounts-- we see the whole globe engaged as the action proceeds smartly along on many levels. Director [...]
