Osama Bin Laden is dead. The chilling and detailed ZERO DARK THIRTY directed by Kathryn Bigelow (the first woman ever to win an Oscar for Best Director: THE HURT LOCKER) and written by Mark Boal tells us with great suspense and precision of the ten-year hunt for the terrorist leader, and his execution by Navy [...]
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 [...]
If you're in touch with your inner adolescent girl--and I am-- you'll love THE TWILIGHT SAGA:BREAKING DAWN- PART 2. I know it's been savaged in The Globe by Wesley Morris-- and many other critics. But honestly, having Wes review this film is like sending Andre the Giant to a pajama party--it's just not his milieu. [...]
The opening sequence of SKYFALL is a mind-boggling, ass-kicking, death-defying Rube Goldberg variation involving a speeding car, chasing a speeding train, carrying a giant front loader, with 007 and his nemesis-of-the-moment locked in combat and dangling by their fingertips, heading for an overpass, with a sniper looking to take one of them out! I nearly [...]
Ben Affleck has done it behind the camera again-- directed a first rate thriller! It's sleeker, sharper, and surer than his previous directorial work-- and it's already being touted as a possible Best Picture nominee: ARGO. It's a movie about making a movie, a story within a story, and as such is a great cinematic [...]
If Richard Gere is up on the big screen--I'm watching. I've been smitten since his Armani-clad turn as an AMERICAN GIGOLO. In ARBITRAGE, he's grayer, still a sharp dresser-- and still playing fast and loose with his personal and professional life. Technically "arbitrage" is defined as "the possibility of a risk-free profit at zero cost." [...]
Last night I interviewed Boston's own Ben Affleck in person before a live audience at the AMC BOSTON COMMON CINEMAS immediately following a 7PM special screening of his latest film, ARGO! Ben stars in and directs this taut thriller about a little known chapter in the Iranian hostage crisis that put the nail in the [...]
Though I saw TOTAL RECALL a mere 48 hours ago, my recollection of it is less than total. I do remember Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel walloping the daylights out of each other. And, as is usually the case in these sorts of action thrillers, neither of them so much as dislodges her lip gloss-- [...]
Within the first minute of director Oliver Stone's SAVAGES, we hear Blake Lively's character say in voice over about the man we see sexually grinding her to a pulp, that she has "orgasms," but "he has war-gasms." And we know we're off on a testosterone-fueled rampage where men are at war and women-- even when [...]
This is a lean time of year for good films-- but THE HUNGER GAMES has put an end to the famine. It isn't perfect-- but it is perfectly cast. Jennifer Lawrence who earned considerable notice for her powerful, understated performance in 2010's WINTER'S BONE, is bound for superstardom in this futuristic thriller directed by Gary Ross, [...]
