Who cares about the OSCARS-- right now. In fact, regional groups like the BOSTON SOCIETY OF FILM CRITICS have been known to have a major influence on which way the wind blows at Oscar time. So listen up fans, cinephiles and Oscar-ites: WE HAVE SPOKEN. We met today at the hippest hotel in town the REVERE HOTEL [...]
Will they be holiday hits? Will they win OSCARS? Add these to my Fall Movie Preview list for a complete big screen Holiday Movie Guide! (11/14) THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING He's the English-speaking Einstein--British physicist Stephen Hawking--whose book A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME made us all think we could almost understand the theory of everything. This biopic stars [...]
I love a good thriller. I love a good mystery. I love to be scared-- at the movies. I love Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth. Together? Heaven! Or hell? I went hoping for the former, and left feeling like I'd fallen from a great height. Kidman and Firth co-star here in the mystery thriller BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP [...]
It's the one film I have been dying to see all year. I'm talking GONE GIRL, based on the best seller by Gillian Flynn who also wrote the screenplay. I love a great thriller, love Ben Affleck and a beautiful woman, in this case a stunning Rosamund Pike who's riveting here. There's 145 minutes to get lost in, and [...]
Two quick reviews before the weekend! NOAH is a crazy film by Darren Aronofsky (THE FOUNTAIN, BLACK SWAN) manifesting the filmmaker's trademark tussle with the unknowable and a feverish attempt to reconcile good and evil, faith and fear, while yoking the otherworldly to concrete reality. Russell Crowe as Noah gets the message to build an [...]
The race is ON! Chris "Thor" Hemsworth helped hammer home the 86th Oscar nominations with Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs and the results are pretty much as I expected: AMERICAN HUSTLE and GRAVITY tied for most nominations--10 each, followed by 12 YEARS A SLAVE with 9! What I'm delighted about? Matthew McConaughey. It's his year [...]
No matter what anyone tells you, AMERICAN HUSTLE is one of THE best movies of the year. And it was shot in Boston (standing in for New Jersey)-- so it was a kick to see the gilded Wang Theater lobby and environs decked out as a swank gambling hall for one of the film's climactic [...]
I like THE HUNGER GAMES: series, and the second installment, CATCHING FIRE--despite a colleague's calling it "a long slog"--absolutely held me. Once again, the charismatic Jennifer Lawrence as the reluctant firebrand Katniss Everdeen continues to rebel against the capitol. Having out-witted the powers that be in the first Hunger Games--a TV spectacle in which children [...]
What is it about Sandra Bullock and one-word titles that place her at the mercy of out of control modes of transport? In GRAVITY the vehicle is a space "bus" of sorts, thousands of light years away from the earthbound thrills of the movie that put her on the map--SPEED. Written and directed by Alfonso [...]
PRISONERS is one of the best films I've seen at the movies in weeks. It pops like a kernel in a myriad ways--full of nooks and crannies, threatening & thrilling, sad & shocking, and just plain entertaining. I followed this thriller about two little girls who disappear on Thanksgiving Day-- right down a very dark [...]
