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:
Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin
Review:
People over 50 talking about sex and — yikes! —
having it! Welcome to It’s Complicated, a romcom that
qualifies as a waking nightmare for teens and infantile men whose
definition of “hot” hovers around jailbait. Screw them. (
Peter Travers reviews It’s Complicated in his weekly video
podcast, “At the Movies with […]

Continue reading " It’s Complicated "

Starring:
Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal
Review:
As has-been country singer Bad Blake (great name), Jeff Bridges
looks like something scraped off the bowling alleys he’s been
reduced to playing. His beard redefines scraggly. His guitar can’t
hide his gut. His voice croaks from cigarettes, booze and one-night
stands that earned him four divorce decrees. But this Bad boy can
write songs […]

Continue reading " Crazy Heart "

Starring:
Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer, James McAvoy
Review:
Helen Mirren is a lusty, roaring wonder playing, of all things,
the long-suffering wife of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy
(Christopher Plummer in peak form). Countess Sofya, married to the
old man for 48 years and the mother of his 13 children, is beside
herself over her husband’s decision — in the last […]

Continue reading " Last Station "

Starring:
Nicholas Cage, Eva Mendes
Review:
There are few things more entertaining than watching Nicolas
Cage go bug-fuck in a movie that knows how to present the spectacle
in style. To my list of fave Cage meltdowns — Vampire?s
Kiss, Wild at Heart and Face/Off — add this bad
boy from director Werner Herzog, no stranger to diving off deep
ends.
Get […]

Continue reading " Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans "

Starring:
Woody Harrelson, Ben Foster, Samantha Morton
Review:
If anyone asks you where the best and brightest new directors
are coming from, point to Oren Moverman, whose vividly touching and
vital debut feature signals the arrival of a filmmaker — he
wrote the script with Alessandro Camon — who can bare the
soul of a character with precision and healing […]

Continue reading " The Messenger "

Starring:
Chris Messina, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Jane
L…
Review:
The ideal recipe has a special ingredient that can lift a dish
from meh to memorable. Meryl Streep — at her
brilliant, beguiling best — is the spice that does the trick
for the yummy Julie & Julia. Written and directed with
sharp wit and unforced wonder by […]

Continue reading " Julie & Julia "

Starring:
Michelle Pfeiffer
Review:
As a cougar chasing a teen twink: That’s a crass précis
for the elegant, witty pleasures that Pfeiffer, director Stephen
Frears and writer Christopher Hampton — who last collaborated
on 1988’s Dangerous Liaisons — carve out of this
tale by the French novelist Colette. Set in Paris in the early
1900s, the film begins as retired courtesan […]

Continue reading " Cheri "

Starring:
Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, Patricia Clarkson
Review:
Not everything works in Woody Allen?s first New York–based
movie in five years (he?s gone European). Whatever Works
feels like something out of time and, worse, out of step. Hell,
Allen wrote the script back in the 1970s for Zero Mostel. The
grumpy old Jew at the center of this comedy […]

Continue reading " Whatever Works "

Starring:
Jennifer Aniston
Review:
It takes half an hour — forever in movie time — for
this relationship comedy to get going. But when it does, Jennifer
Aniston, as a corporate type who buys ghastly motel art, and Steve
Zahn, as the night manager at his parents’ Arizona motor inn, do
quiet wonders. Smarting from her split from a yogurt […]

Continue reading " Management "