There are certain films whose time has passed and THE OTHER WOMAN is one of those. The cultural clock has been ticking and material like this has expired. Or so I thought. Apparently the "throwbacks" among us who think such films are in any way clever, funny, or entertaining-- still exist. The film is a [...]
The modern day spinner of cinematic fairytales, Wes Anderson, is like that other "Andersen"--Hans Christian-- in his telling of layered fables that have adults, as well as children in their sights. But Wes Anderson accentuates the comedy, like "concupiscent curds" atop a heady brew of murder, mutilation, and even deeper mayhem. His latest THE GRAND [...]
I am sitting here as a nor'easter wails outside, thinking about WINTER'S TALE and how cold it left me. It's also not going to do much for the ravishing young actress whose character "Lady Sybil" was killed off in DOWNTOWN ABBEY--Jessica Brown Findlay. Her career will remain in the deep freeze until a better movie [...]
I stumbled out of this film in a daze of horrified relief. The Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tracy Letts, now a movie starring Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, describes one of the most dysfunctional sagas in the annals of dysfunctional family sagas. It is not the bleak, claustrophobic womb of madness and despair that is [...]
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 cannot say enough about ENOUGH SAID-- one of the best films at the movies right now! It's an authentic, charming, tenderly-acted but unsentimental tale about grown-ups falling in love. Yes-- grown-ups, a pair of middle-aged divorcees played by the late James Gandolfini (to whom the film is dedicated) and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Albert and Eva meet [...]
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 [...]
I've yet to see THE WOLVERINE and believe I am the LONE CRITIC who loved THE LONE RANGER. Here's the best & worst of the rest so far: 20 FEET FROM STARDOM--This revealing, heartbreaking documentary charts the careers, hopes, dreams, disappointments of the back-up singers who literally stand inches away from center stage-the voices behind [...]
