Gone Baby Gone is a sterling thriller, the kind of raw cinematic power that you tell your friends about as if you’ve just been put through the spin cycle. Helmed by first-time director Ben Affleck, and starring his brother, Casey, the film scorches a raw nerve from frame one and… Continue reading
We Own the Night, with its top-drawer cast and sleek production, never distinguishes itself from the countless family-driven crime yarns of years past. It’s not to say that this is bad film; just one we’ve all seen before, repackaged nicely for a Fall release. Above all else, it’s a dour… Continue reading
“I’m not the guy you kill. I’m the guy you buy off.” – Michael Clayton Michael Clayton is the kind of slow burn that only makes its way to theaters at this time of year. It’s the kind of film whose suspense comes from silence, whose dialogue is first-rate, and… Continue reading
Something has happened to the Farrelly Brothers since 2005’s Fever Pitch, and that something is named Judd Apatow. While the Farrelly’s laid the groundwork for the contemporary raunch-fest with a heart, Apatow has brought it full circle with the likes of The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up. The… Continue reading
The Kingdom is a contemporary example of what a serious war action/drama used to be, even just a decade ago. Here we stand in a war that has already lasted longer than all of World War II and Hollywood’s method for handling the material is to shoot for the jugular,… Continue reading
Dane Cook plays a dentist in Good Luck Chuck, but the movie plays that part straight. Having had braces, three tooth extractions, three bone graphs, and three dental implants, I can say with relative ease that none of that was as painful as watching this pathetic waste of celluloid. The… Continue reading
The Brave One is alarmingly misguided; a film that wants so bad to be important and to have something to say. What is this supposed to be? A revenge drama? A satire on the films that precede it (i.e. Death Wish)? A black comedy? The screenwriters (all three of them)… Continue reading
I have spent the past several years crowing about how the action genre is dead and has been taken over by sci-fi and comic book adaptations. The days of the “body count movie” were thought to be over (mainly due to increasing similarities between reality and fiction), but along comes… Continue reading
“Reworking,” “reimagining,” and “reinventing” are popular words these days as studio heads and directors alike struggle to defend their choices in projects. Even occasional moviegoers have to have picked up on the creative bankruptcy that has plagued Hollywood for the past, oh, ten years or so. Plenty of egregious horror… Continue reading
The title Balls of Fury opens the door for a cavalcade of obvious jokes, and one should definitely process that before entering the theater to catch this comedy. It’s yet another that capitalizes on games that few of us would even consider sports, and it continues this summer’s unlikely run… Continue reading