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‘Jurassic Park 3D’ Review
You can buy replicas of Richard Attenborough's amber-tipped cane or you can listen to ten minute loops of Jeff Goldblum's oddball laugh but there's something you haven't been able to do in twenty years: hear the roar of a T. rex fighting two Velociraptors from thunderous, surround sound of big cinema speakers. Something you've never been able to do is see it in 3D or in IMAX. Until now. And you don't want to miss it.
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‘The Company You Keep’ Review
There are probably more works of fiction about the Weather Underground than there were ever members.
Okay, that's a hyperbolic statement, but when you get in the mindset of the radical left of the 1960s and 1970s you tend to get a little grand in your rhetoric. The Weather Underground, if you don't know, was the anti-Vietnam youth movement so sickened by the US's foreign policy that they felt they had to “bring the war home” with acts of domestic terrorism. In real life, they called ahead to warn of bombs in government buildings – and the only blood they shed was their own during an explosives accident in a Greenwich Village apartment – but for the movies, even one by a bonafide liberal like Robert Redford, it is easy to paint them as people who let their ideals take them too far.
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‘The Place Beyond the Pines’ Review
To watch 'The Place Beyond the Pines' is to observe characters making discoveries. Discoveries about their past, their environment, their heritage. When the revelations come they aren't met with gasps or dropped objects, but with an understanding, an acceptance that, yes, this is, indeed, the way things are.
While you'd swear with every bone in your body that this vast, rich, symbol-heavy tale was surely based on a thick doorstopper of a novel, the surprising fact remains that it is, actually, an original screenplay. It seems, though, a natural progression after the character portraiture of Derek Cianfrance's last film 'Blue Valentine.' This new one has the essence of 'Blue Valentine' but blown open far and wide.
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‘Dead Man Down’ Review
A few titters wafted through the screening of 'Dead Man Down' as the WWE Studios logo came up on the screen. “Prejudice!” I thought. “Who is to say that Vince McMahon's new(ish) venture can't produce a quality piece of filmed entertainment?” Turns out all skepticism was justified.
'Dead Man Down,' a tiresome, predictable slog through every “in too deep” crime story cliché you've ever seen has as much subtlety as the average Face or Heel shouting into the mic during a Monday Night Raw. This is a dull movie that only perks up when it veers into the laughable, as when Noomi Rapace's character intentionally spikes Colin Farrell's character's two-years-in-the-making vengeance plot because she “had a moment,” but then bounces back into plan five minutes later anyway. Yes, I'm getting ahead of myself.
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‘Identity Thief’ Review
Funny is, of course, subjective. I find Woody Allen funny but there are plenty of people who find him about as amusing as being slowly asphyxiated in plastic bags from CVS. Still, I'll hazard to guess that there is no one who will find Melissa McCarthy obnoxiously singing along to Kelis' not-at-all-current "Milkshake" funny. Especially when 'Identity Thief' - a new "comedy" with McCarthy and Jason Bateman - goes to quite successful lengths to make you HATE her character. And you just might wind up hating this movie too.
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‘The Dirties’ Review
Nobody asked for this movie. But someone was going to make it. I'm just glad it was Matthew Johnson, a young (but not as young as he looks!) Canadian director/co-writer/co-star who has the chutzpah to take on a really difficult subject and the chops to deliver without coming off as crass or exploitative. There are plenty who will refuse to give 'The Dirties' the time of day, and that's somewhat understandable, but if you believe that, in order to correct a problem it must first be discussed, 'The Dirties' is, I feel, a noble mix of entertainment and social importance.
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‘Before Midnight’ Review
Allow me to mar the sophisticated, near-painterly screenplay of Richard Linklater's 'Before Midnight' with these purple lines from the Steve Miller Band: time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future.
Oozing sagacity, melancholia and, if you work at it,
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‘Parental Guidance’ Review
I was worried 2012 would end and there wouldn't be a clear winner for the prize of Worst of the Year. 'Parental Guidance' was worth waiting for. It isn't just the worst film of 2012, it's the worst film of 2011 and probably 2013, too. 'Parental Guidance' is a cinematic hemorrhoid throbbing on the screen, its only purpose in life to cause pain and discomfort.
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‘The Guilt Trip’ Review
I imagine the pitch meeting went like this: "Producer: We got Barbra Streisand, we got Seth Rogen, we get 'em in a car. Release it around Christmas. I mean, you gotta take grandma somewhere during the Holidays. Executive: Are there life-lessons involved? Producer: Does the Pope crap in the woods? Of course there are."
Lo and behold, a year later, these two guys found themselves at the premiere for 'The Guilt Trip,' a movie that didn't cost too much to make and won't make that much of an impact but will empower everyone involved to one day strike again.
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‘Les Miserables’ Review
Is it possible to hate something and yet, at the same time, recognize its greatness? This is a heavy philosophical question and one that I'd like to discuss with you. Anything to get these insufferably catchy tunes from 'Les Miserables' out of my head.