MOVIE REVIEWS: CHRONICLE
There will be something other than the Super Bowl that will be super this weekend. A movie about three dorky Seattle teenagers — the sort who would never be seen dead in front of a TV set on Super Sunday — who are suddenly gifted with super powers. Chronicle begins when they discover a crystalline [...]
MOVIE REVIEWS: THE SITTER
December 9, 2011 by admin · Leave a Comment
While you may have to hunt to find the plethora of end-of-the-year movies with “potential Oscar nominee” writ all over them — most are appearing in a relative handful of theaters and, in many cities, not at all — you’ll have no trouble finding The Sitter, which is being released in thousands of theaters and [...]
MOVIE REVIEWS: HUGO
Most critics are hailing Martin Scorsese’s Hugo with the passion of confirmed acolytes. Among all of them, Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle stands out as the apostate. Scorsese, he writes, is trying to live up to his “own legend,” trying “to impress us with a deluge of 3D effects.” The result, he writes, [...]
MOVIE REVIEWS: A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3-D CHRISTMAS
The third Harold & Kumar movie is in 3D — and that technology is sent up for laughs by the writers and stars, John Cho and Kal Penn in A Very Harold & Kumar 3-D Christmas. “Leave it to a Harold & Kumar’ movie to expose modern 3D for the tawdry gimmick it is while [...]
MOVIE REVIEWS: PUSS IN BOOTS
October 28, 2011 by admin · Leave a Comment
DreamWorks Animation’s Puss in Boots is garnering the kind of reviews ordinarily reserved for films displaying the Pixar label. Among the country’s leading newspaper critics, only one, Lou Lumenick of the New York Post, has given it a negative review. In fact, Michael O’Sullivan in the Washington Post calls it “almost shockingly good. And not [...]
MOVIE REVIEWS: PARANORMAL ACTIVITY III
The producers of Paranormal Activity III might just as well have knocked on the doors of movie critics and yelled, “Trick or treat!” As it turned out, they have got both. A week before the Halloween weekend, they are being treated to some quite favorable reviews by several top-drawer critics. Mark Olsen in the Los [...]
MOVIE REVIEWS: THE BIG YEAR
October 14, 2011 by admin · Leave a Comment
If you think you have seen a movie about every sport that has ever existed, think again. The Big Year is a movie about competitive bird watching and stars Owen Wilson as the champion — a man who has spotted more than 700 bird species in a single year — and Steve Martin and Jack [...]
MOVIE REVIEWS: MONEYBALL
September 23, 2011 by admin · Leave a Comment
Moneyball is coming to the screens at the tail end of the baseball season, as interest in the playoffs mounts. The timing is probably not coincidental, given the fact that much of the film concerns the sensational rise of the cash-poor 2001 Oakland A’s to the division playoffs under the management of Billy Beane, played [...]
MOVIE REVIEWS: DOLPHIN TALE
September 23, 2011 by admin · Leave a Comment
Several critics suggest that when acting awards are handed out this year, the star of Dolphin Tale should not be overlooked. That’s not Ashley Judd, Morgan Freeman, or Harry Connick Jr. but Winter the dolphin whose tale is told in this calculatedly uplifting movie. Writes Ty Burr in the Boston Globe: “The dolphin is, quite [...]
MOVIE REVIEWS: THE DEBT
September 2, 2011 by admin · Leave a Comment
The season of the superhero has ended; it’s time for ordinary, thinking folks to populate the screens of movie theaters across the country again. Such is the case with The Debt, starring Helen Mirren, Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington, and Tom Wilkinson. Virtually all the critics are giving it positive reviews — some more positive than [...]