![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() New addition to the boxing movie canon? Absolutely, complete with elemental title, elemental story and devastating performances. A female power story as much as a male one, Melissa Leo, Christian Bale and Mark Walhberg’s maternal-fraternal triangle pegs the meter for codependency. When Amy Ada…
WikChip Image
All in the (dysfunctional) Family
|
||||||
Fingering two of society’s soft spots, Cyrus lampoons middle-aged singles looking for love and grown kids who’ve been emotionally indulged their entire overly-protected lives. Plus it generates plenty of LOL moments in the offing. Score. John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill deliver great performa…
WikChip Video
Snow White and the Two Dorks
|
||||||
![]() Lots of pretty people delivering razor sharp comedy atop an idiotic premise makes for a very good movie. The central conceit of Our Idiot Brother – Paul Rudd’s absurdly guileless fool, a.k.a. the Idiot Brother – gets just this side of tedious however. Fortunately the whole thing is more than a…
WikChip Image
Elizabeth Banks: Uptown Gorgeous
|
||||||
![]() Fifteen years after Sleepless in Seattle, Feast of Love offers Pairing in Portland, a cinematic soap opera full of smiles, bits of sadness and wisdom, and attractive couples in love. While lite, it is entertaining. Emotional Scores
|
||||||
![]() Two great movies, one bad title, The Place Beyond the Pines could lose 20 ticks and still be twice typical Hollywood fare. Ryan Gosling & Bradley Cooper play two guys on opposite sides of the law, whose paths cross to lethal effect. Both are conflicted and sympathetic. Neither is untarnishe…
WikChip Image
Eye Dropper TearTat -- nice touch
|
||||||
![]() Joe Morgenstern declared Mud an instant classic in the Wall Street Journal. Not sure why, but hell yes. You almost want to ding Mud for being such a classically terrific movie, but damn if it doesn’t play out as monumentally cinematic yet nearly natural. Kind of a crime caper involving b…
WikChip Image
Leading men, now & then: Matthew & Tye
|
||||||
![]() A three hanky weeper of the best kind – uplifting and funny. I was fortunate to watch it in the darkened cabin of an overnight flight to London, otherwise the tears streaming down my face would have been noticeable to others. But a good man-cry …
WikChip Image
Momma's Boy: The real Michael Oher
|
||||||
![]() Cate Blanchett transfixes in Woody Allen’s superior dramedy Blue Jasmine. Playing the Jasmine of the title, Blanchett goes from Park Avenue socialite to broken vixen in a performance that masterfully oscillates between elegance and rawness. That last almost assures her an Academy Award nomina…
WikChip Image
The great Cate in Chanel & pearls w ...
|
||||||
![]() The Way, Way Back is the perfect summer movie from this Summer of `13. It opens and closes with a painfully awkward teen in the late, lamented way-way-back of a 1970 Buick Estate Station Wagon. In between he spends a life-changing summer at the beach house of his mom’s asshole boyfriend, pl…
WikChip Image
Awkward boy meets way, way cool girl
|
||||||
![]() MMA gets its 15 minutes of movie fame in Warrior, reason enough for mixed-martial arts fans to revere it. For the rest of us? Reason to avoid it. Most movie fans in Silicon Valley apparently fall in the latter camp, judging from the near empty Camera 7 theater on opening night. Pity, beca…
WikChip Video
Trailer featuring music by The National
|