Vantage Point is, unapologetically, a gimmick movie, and on that level it works. It’s refreshing to see a film based around politics that isn’t preachy, doesn’t have an agenda, and instead just goes for straight-up frenetic action. That’s not to say it doesn’t become maddening repetitive at times (only about… Continue reading
Sylvester Stallone, like him or not, deserves some credit. He resurrected his Rocky franchise last year to largely critical praise (although I wasn’t part of that) and now he has brought back the 1980’s most iconic action hero. Not bad for a guy who recently crossed age 60. With Rocky… Continue reading
27 Dresses is about as standard of romantic comedy fare as you can get, but some very likable and funny performances push it into recommendation territory. Best of all, it doesn’t resort to poorly-executed slapstick (okay, it does a little) or preachy anti-male tirades for laughs. Sure it’s predictable, but… Continue reading
The teaser trailer for Cloverfield, which debuted in front of this past summer’s Transformers – and sporting no title at that, is one of the only trailers I’ve ever seen where people were talking about it rather than the feature film on the way out of the theater. Thus began… Continue reading
Confusions of an Unmarried Couple is my first encounter with the Butler Brothers, who are quickly rising in the Indie ranks with their talky, and often profane, films about relationships and sex. My initial feeling after the screening was as if I had just discovered a stock that’s about to… Continue reading
There’s a scene in Lions for Lambs in which reporter Janine Roth (Streep), during one of several down times in her interview with Senator Jasper Irving (Cruise), takes a stroll around the Senator’s office. The camera pans across a photo of Irving with President Bush, who is giving the trademark… Continue reading
Dan in Real Life is a mixed bag of misery, tenderness, and moderate wit; all wrapped around a wonderful performance by Steve Carell. The film suffers from the usual issues: contrivances are piled as high as one character’s famous pancakes, there are too many characters, and the humor is truly… 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
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
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