Starring:
Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Crispin Glover, Mia Wasikowska
Review:
Sexual panic is the last thing you’d expect to prod Alice to get
her ass down a rabbit hole. But, hell, this is Tim Burton’s
Alice in Wonderland, not your third-grade teacher’s
version. Scholars of British author Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) will
no doubt shriek, “Off with Burton’s head!” for […]

Continue reading " Alice in Wonderland "

Starring:
Richard Gere, Ethan Hawke, Don Cheadle
Review:
Simultaneously full of itself and full of shit, Brooklyn’s
Finest is a cop movie so shallow, dumb, derivative and
infuriating that it feels like a parody of bad cop movies. From the
glaringly obnoxious opening scene of a parked car with its turn
signal blinking, blinking, blinking, to the spray of clichés
that […]

Continue reading " Brooklyn’s Finest "

Starring:
Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup
Review:
Oscar-nominated as Best Foreign Language Film from France, A
Prophet is a prison film like The Godfather is a
gangster film. Meaning this knockout punch of a thriller surpasses
its trappings to speak in a universal language about the ways power
corrupts the human condition. Newcomer Tahar Rahim is astounding as
Malik, 19, an illiterate […]

Continue reading " A Prophet "

Starring:
Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, Seann William Scott
Review:
Kevin Smith has taken so much stupid heat for being “too fat to
fly” that it would be sweet to report that Cop Out is a
return to form for the writer-director of Clerks,
Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike
Back. But Smith didn’t even write this hit-and-miss gag
machine. […]

Continue reading " Cop Out "

Starring:
Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Kim Catrall
Review:
In the craptacular month of February, when Hollywood typically
drowns us in all-star drool like
Valentine?s Day, it?s indecent luck having two films
in play directed by indisputable masters. First Scorsese?s
Shutter Island, and now Roman Polanski?s The Ghost
Writer. The Polish director, currently under house arrest in
Switzerland awaiting possible extradition to the […]

Continue reading " The Ghost Writer "

Starring:
Leonardo DiCaprio, Michelle Williams, Mark Ruffalo
Review:
Martin Scorsese makes movies as if his life depends on it, never
skimping on ferocity and feeling. From Mean Streets to
The Departed, Scorsese?s crime films turn the genre on its
empty head, shaking out the clichés to uncover the violence
of the mind. His latest, Shutter Island, sizzles with so
much nerve-frying […]

Continue reading " Shutter Island "

Starring:
Anthony Hopkins, Benicio Del Toro
Review:
No fun either. And no real scares, which is more unforgivable. All
the attention to technical detail (Rick Baker’s makeup is aces)
results in some graphic and gory transformation scenes as Benicio
Del Toro gets bitten by a werewolf (no, not Taylor Lautner) while
walking under a full moon and grows more hair […]

Continue reading " The Wolfman "

Starring:
Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, Eric Dane, Patrick
De…
Review:
Just because Sunday is February 14th, don’t let Cupid suck you
into crass commercialism disguised as a romantic comedy.
Valentine’s Day is a date movie from hell. How did
director Garry Marshall persuade a big name cast to stuff
themselves into this box of rancid heart-shaped chocolates? I can
hear […]

Continue reading " Valentine’s Day "

Starring:
Review:
The title dares to evoke From Russia With Love, one of
the best Bond movies ever. From Paris With Love isn’t
among the best of anything, but it definitely corners the market on
the worst. Staring John Travolta with shaved head and badass
attitude left over from The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, this
clanking bore of […]

Continue reading " From Paris With Love "

Starring:
Review:
This shameless tearjerker is Hollywood’s alternative assault on
Super Bowl weekend. Translation: While guys grunt and stuff their
faces in front of large-screen TVs, women will line up to luxuriate
in a bubblebath made from essence of Nicholas Sparks. You know who
Sparks is, the guy who writes bestselling weepies that become
appalling movies, such as The Notebook, […]

Continue reading " Dear John "