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The Chain Gang: Django Unchained
Get ready to shake, rattle and roll. Quentin Tarantino is back, bringing us a massive overdose of brutal sex, bloodshed, carnage, torture and man’s inhumanity to man—and just in time for Christmas. In...
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Road Trip to Nowhere: The Guilt Trip
It is to her everlasting credit that a famously exasperating perfectionist like Barbra Streisand could survive a limp noodle like The Guilt Trip. This cheesy comedy concerns a nerdy, 30-something loser...
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Reacher Feature: In Jack Reacher, Our Hero Shrinks to Fit the Silver Screen
Cruise in Jack Reacher. Based on one in a series of numbing beach paperbacks (17 in all) by Lee Child about a mysterious assassin named Jack Reacher, this film is deader than the corpses that litter...
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Cue the Credits: In a Year of Few Memorable Contributions, Many Unforgettable...
Houston. Before the old man with the beard and scythe surrenders completely and we turn 2013 over to the kid in diapers with his year to grow, let’s pause and raise a glass to the folks we left behind...
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Quartet: Hoffman’s Directorial Debut is a Delicate Narrative Laced Together...
Pauline Collins and Maggie Smith star in Quartet. A delicious ensemble of some of the U.K.’s most legendary seniors turns Quartet, Dustin Hoffman’s auspicious film-directing debut, into an elegant,...
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In Gangster Squad, Stylish Sets, Captivating Cinematography and Top-notch...
Emma Stone in Gangster Squad. The new movie season begins with a bang. Gangster Squad is a period piece, set in 1949, about Jewish, Brooklyn-born thug Mickey Cohen, who moved to the West Coast to rule...
View ArticleThe Baytown Outlaws Is a Flaming Bag of Drivel
A worthless farrago of noise, dirt and senseless violence, The Baytown Outlaws mixes three filthy, mentally challenged Alabama psycho hit men called the Oodie Brothers, one trashy, trigger-happy wife...
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Mama Is Another Homage to Horror’s Demented Stepfather
Jessica Chastain in Mama. Guillermo del Toro is the Mexican-born king of Spanish horror films that often inspire more than they satisfy. When he isn’t directing stylish tales of the supernatural (Pan’s...
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Simply Confusing: Picnic Dishes Out a Delightful Spread of Inge’s Rustic Realism
The cast of Picnic. William Inge, the grain belt Tennessee Williams, was one of the three most important playwrights in the American theater of the ’50s, along with Williams and Arthur Miller. He...
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The Road Map to Broken City Is All Potholes and Detours
Wahlberg in Broken City. Hacked out by one of the twin Hughes brothers who directed the Jack the Ripper potboiler From Hell, Allen Hughes’s Broken City is another feverish, thickly plotted, overwritten...
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Knife Fight Is as Good as Cable News!
A scene from Knife Fight. As a bare-knuckle assault on the corruption that has come to define the creeping rot of American politics, Knife Fight is neither as satirical as Barry Levinson’s Wag the Dog...
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Broadway Romance is a Delightful Evening of Cozy Love Songs
The stars of Broadway Romance. Belt-tightening measures in the new economic squeeze are being felt all over town, but at the chic Café Carlyle—even if the marquee names lack the usual luster in the...
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Requiem for a Fairy Tale: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters
Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. Once upon a time, about eight centuries ago, when Little Red Riding Hood was being eaten by a wolf in granny glasses, there lived a pair of starving orphans named...
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An Ever-Stale Statham Delivers Yet Another Lockjawed Performance in Parker
Statham in Parker. A routine thug convention called Parker is a complete master class by veteran director Taylor Hackford in how to turn a yawn into a snore. He’s made some memorable movies in his day...
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No Surprise Here: Christine Andreas’s ‘Bemused’ Hits All the Right Notes
Christine Andreas performing her new program, 'Bemused,' at 54 Below. The venue 54 Below, New York’s beautiful new cabaret room in the renovated basement of the once-notorious Studio 54 disco, is...
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Declined: In Identity Thief, Bateman’s Bankable Billing Can’t Lift This Flick...
A rip off. How many ways can a grown person waste valuable time and lose vital I.Q. points at the same time? If you’re a movie critic, the possibilities are unlimited. And they all come together in a...
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Malpractice: There May Be Side Effects, but There’s Just No Miracle Drug for...
A movie to make you sick. Steven Soderbergh is famous for pulling our chains. His movies are like first drafts for better movies one hopes another director will someday make. Pretentious and overrated,...
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Compliments to the Chef: Would You Rather is a Bloody Rare Turn at Classic...
Delicious. Another harrowing, bloody, but far from boring video game played by real people without a modem, screen or electrical outlet, Would You Rather is a reality-based variation of The Hunger...
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No Lore Lost: ‘A Holocaust Film Unlike Any Other’
A scene from Lore. From countless movies, books and television documentaries on the History Channel, we know about the Nazis who were rounded up and tried as war criminals after World War II, but what...
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Whack Magic: In Beautiful Creatures, An Antiquated Narrative Casts a Tired Spell
Emmy Rossum in Beautiful Creatures. As Dorothy Parker used to say, “What fresh hell is this?” Goodbye, Harry Potter and the flying broomsticks at Hogwarts. Hello, lovesick witches in South Carolina....
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