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, [...]
Be among the first to watch the world premiere of Chapter 1, the first 12 minutes of a new psychological thriller called: SOUND OF MY VOICE--presented by Fox Searchlight and due out April 27th! The first 12 minutes are streamed below and it's interactive. The clip has “baked in” alternative content via interactive “hotspots” and [...]
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO is a killer film that will leave you breathing hard, and thinking at warp speed. Directed by David Fincher and based on the smash international best-selling trilogy by the late Stieg Larsson, the American version is not as viscerally affecting as its Swedish cousin, but packs mighty tension into [...]
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 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 [...]
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=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 [...]
https://youtu.be/Yjg5t3__lLs THE DEBT opens with an intriguing bang, and closes with an fatiguing clang. But its two leading ladies had me at hello: Dame Helen Mirren queen of the movies, and Jessica Chastain the Meryl Streep of her generation-- with 3 big movies out this summer (THE TREE OF LIFE, THE HELP), and at least [...]
It's a trashy page turner that lingers too long on the sexual torture of women, a Miss Marple-like list of suspects, and an ending that's on the visible horizon from page one. I was among the few who disliked the late Stieg Larsson's international bestselling thriller. Then I saw the movie. In Swedish. The film [...]
