We saw. We met. We voted. The BOSTON SOCIETY OF FILM CRITICS (BSFC) has just announced its awards for the best films, performances, and technical achievements in 15 major categories for 2012! Topping the list with three awards is director Kathryn Bigelow's ZERO DARK THIRTY about the ten-year hunt for Osama bin Laden which won BEST [...]
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. [...]
Friends, my gift to you this Christmas weekend is a review of the most enchanting, witty, and brilliant film at the movies this year: THE ARTIST. More magical than HUGO, more universally appealing than THE DESCENDANTS, THE ARTIST speaks volumes without saying a word. It's a valentine to the movies that will leave you as [...]
There is one reason to see MY WEEK WITH MARILYN and that is to witness the wonder that is Michelle Williams performance as THE blonde sex symbol of all time Marilyn Monroe. Williams performance is nothing short of miraculous and may just win her this season's Oscar for BEST ACTRESS. I resisted the impersonation at [...]
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 [...]
