TWILIGHT: BREAKING DAWN is the single most effective antidote to teen pregnancy I've ever seen. It's cinematic birth control. Send your teenagers. I saw it Monday afternoon in a theater with mostly single older ladies and one mother/daughter pair who apparently had not read the books; they looked shell-shocked as the credits rolled. The film [...]
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 [...]
https://youtu.be/uLUWHW5NxwI This beautiful afternoon which I spent indoors, at the movies, seeing ONE DAY--was one day well-spent. Though flawed,the film based on the best-seller stars a charismatic twosome: the multitalented Anne Hathaway who here does a serviceable English accent, and the already English and mightily talented Jim Sturgess (ACROSS THE UNIVERSE). ONE DAY calls on [...]
I've found myself at odds with the prevailing winds. But as always, I'm blowing my own way. Here's what I thought of: - Woody Allen's MIDNIGHT IN PARIS--it's slight but funny with a romantic spirit and an appealing performance by Woody's alter ego Owen Wilson as a writer enthralled with Paris in the 20's. By [...]
The studios have spat out another summer comedy with two big stars: Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts in LARRY CROWNE. The stars can't steer this sappy, poorly executed, and ill-conceived hunk of nonsense-- penned by Hanks and Nia (MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING) Vardalos-- away from the fate it deserves: oblivion. Hanks cheerfully condescends to [...]
I've always hated circuses. Wouldn't cover them on TV for 25 years. It's not just the confined and lonely animals, it's whatever darkness and sadness is under all that makeup... BUT I really enjoyed WATER FOR ELEPHANTS--maybe because it didn't hide the darkness, and somehow still captured the magic that circuses promise: exotic beauty and [...]
I couldn't wait to see MORNING GLORY which promised a charming cast in a sweetly comic plot-- or so I thought. There's Rachel McAdams as the sprightly young morning TV show producer chock full of earnestness who has been hired to breathe life into a dead dog of a morning newscast. The warring anchors are [...]
"Eat Pray Love" is the latest incarnation of the archetypal female journey. It's the trip every woman wants to take. Unlike Ulysses whose journey requires him to fight all manner of monsters and physical obstacles in order to literally get "home," author Liz Gilbert's journey- a woman fleeing an unhappy marriage on a year-long sojourn [...]
"THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE" TRAILER It's beyond an eclipse. It's a black out of intergalactic proportions. No one really expected this movie about Edward (Robert Pattinson) the vampire and Jacob(Taylor Lautner) the werewolf fighting over Bella (Kristen Stewart) the reluctant Swan to be great art. But I didn't expect it to put me into a [...]
I've been hearing that folks don't like NINE, and that they are pulling it from theatres because of tepid reviews, and weak box office. I am probably among the few who actually liked this film despite its flaws. The cast is an extraordinary one, and has been used in ways that appeal to me. Who [...]
