RUBY SPARKS: Worth A Ticket – A Narrative Feat Woody Allen is one of the most influential figures in modern independent film, but his ghost is usually evident in the many romantic comedy-dramas we get each year paying homage to Annie Hall and Manhattan, about hyper-intellectual big-city types who lurch in and out […]
MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM: Watch It At Home – More Like a Trudge The movies haven’t figured out what to do with Idris Elba. The powerful, fiery actor has been spectacular on TV, first on The Wire and more recently on Luther, and he’s kicked around as a supporting player in some big-budget […]
ENDLESS LOVE: Not Even For Free – Hopeless Wreck Truly: why does this new ENDLESS LOVE exist? Even on the crassest commercial level, it makes very little sense. The 1981 Franco Zeffirelli/Brooke Shields/Martin Hewitt version is remembered as neither good nor particularly successful (it made only half as much as Shields’ Blue Lagoon had […]
HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS: Not At Any Price – Audiences Won’t Live Happily Ever After HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS is mostly terrible, but say this for it: it’s not terrible like anything else out there. If you’ve always wanted to see an R-rated, gore-ridden, smart-alecky anachronistic fantasy in which fairy tale characters […]
MONSTERS UNIVERSITY: Watch It At Home – No Dean’s List For Pixar’s Latest There’s a wonderfully charming, imaginative Pixar movie opening on Friday, one that will restore your faith in the studio’s near-miraculous ability to give life and personality to the most unlikely objects (here including a parking meter and a Walk/Don’t Walk light, […]
THE FAULT IN OUR STARS: Worth A Ticket – John Green’s Beloved Book Is Well Treated By the Screen It’s almost impossible to describe the plot of John Green’s YA novel THE FAULT IN OUR STARS without making it sounding precious and shamelessly sentimental. Erich Segal’s Love Story, the giant hit and instant self-parody […]
NEED FOR SPEED: Watch It At Home – Not Enough Fuel If there was ever a movie that didn’t need to be over 2 hours long, the relatively unpretentious NEED FOR SPEED was it. Action movies these days too often feel like they have to be epics, loaded with backstory and climactic showdowns that […]
LIFE OF PI: Worth A Ticket – A Floating Display of Visual Marvels A boy and a Bengal tiger get into a lifeboat… The digital paintbox now available to filmmakers provides an almost limitless variety of visual possibilities, and also a certain amount of temptation, because like any resource, it can be overused. Ang […]