A week at the Toronto Film Festival added up to 24 screenings–a decent pace, but not an outstanding one.  Blame some vagaries of the festival’s scheduling, and a baseline decision that Midnight Madness was too much midnight and maybe even too much madness.  The potential awards contenders I wasn’t able to get to included […]

  Scott Cooper’s BLACK MASS is a beautifully put together and wonderfully acted true-life drama about Boston gangsters and the law, but it has a void at its center that holds it back from greatness.  That center isn’t occupied by JoOut ofhnny Depp or his character James “Whitey” Bulger (one used that nickname with him […]

  Ridley Scott’s THE MARTIAN is the jaunty sci-fi offspring of Apollo 13 and McGyver, Scott’s least self-important movie in years and not coincidentally his most enjoyable.  Drew Goddard’s expertly crafted script (based on the best-selling novel by Andy Weir) has a premise both simple and massively complex:  during a giant sandstorm on the surface […]

  BLACKHAT:  Not Even For Free – One of Michael Mann’s Worst Michael Mann has become a filmmaking vampire; he sucks the blood out of promising projects.  His new, seemingly up-to-the-minute computer hacking thriller BLACKHAT, following his problematic Miami Vice film and Public Enemies (as well as the pilot for HBO’s Luck) is once again his trademark kind […]

  There was a distinct feeling in 2014 that movies–the business and art of mainstream American film–reached a kind of tipping point.  The industry seemed to collectively hit that moment in its flight when so much fuel has been burned that there’s no longer any realistic possibility of returning to home base. Trends that have […]

  THE HOBBIT:  THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES – Watch It At Home – The Best of the Hobbit Trilogy Is Still Just Its Tallest Dwarf It’s hard to get around the sad fact that Peter Jackson’s THE HOBBIT trilogy has diminished the stature of his great Lord of the Rings series.  It’s all […]

  THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART I:  Worth A Ticket – Half a Good Movie Is Still Half a Movie As big-screen and small-screen entertainment experiences have begun to merge, there’s been an increase in serialized franchise storytelling–super-expensive mega-movies turned into regularly scheduled series.  Sequels, of course, have always been with us, but through the […]

  INTERSTELLAR:  Worth A Ticket – Christopher Nolan’s Imperfect Odyssey Remember A.I.: Artificial Intelligence?  It was the deeply odd sci-fi/fairy tale quasi-collaboration between Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg, originated by Kubrick but rewritten and filmed by Spielberg (at Kubrick’s request) after Kubrick’s death.  Spielberg clearly meant it as a tribute to a great filmmaker and friend, but […]