MOVIE REVIEWS: HER

“Exquisite” — that’s the word New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis uses to describe Spike Jonze’s Her, about a man, played by Joaquin Phoenix, who falls in love with a computer operating system, played by Scarlett Johansson. “This is a movie you want to reach out and caress, about a man who, like everyone […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG

Virtually every review of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug compares it with the previous installment of The Hobbit trilogy, An Unexpected Journey — mostly favorably. For example, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Steven Rea remarks that it “is not only eight minutes shorter than its forebear, it’s at least eight minutes better — less twee, less […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: THOR: THE DARK WORLD

It’s a good thing that Thor: The Dark World is the kind of movie that’s considered critic-proof, because the nation’s leading newspaper critics are giving it an awful hammering. The movie, writes Kyle Smith in the New York Post, “is low-stakes, low-emotion, low brow.” Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal considers it “so dumb […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: THE COUNSELOR

The movie may be directed by three-time Oscar nominee Ridley Scott, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy, and star Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, and Brad Pitt, but all that star power simply doesn’t gel in The Counselor, according to most reviewers, who genuinely seem surprised that it doesn’t. For example, […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: PRISONERS

Virtually every major critic has praised the script, direction, and performances of Prisoners. But some are suggesting that the problem with it may be that it’s just too effective — a film about kidnapped children that will leave moviegoers unsettled even as they leave the theater. “A devastating psychological thriller, Prisoners pulls us deep into […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: ONE DIRECTION: THIS IS US

In London’s Daily Mail, critic Christopher Tookey commented about the One Direction concert documentary This Is Us: “This pretty much defines the kind of movie that is critic-proof.” Actually, the personable young members of the group had nothing to worry about from the critics. The reviews are overwhelmingly positive. Most agree that the film amounts […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: GETAWAY

Reviews don’t come any worse than those for Getaway, starring Selena Gomez and Ethan Hawke. Peter Hartlaub of the San Francisco Chronicle warns that “you’ve probably seen this movie before, watching a child play with his toy Hot Wheels cars after eating multiple bowls of sugary breakfast cereal.” In fact, several critics suggest, the movie […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: WORLD WAR Z

Despite arriving in theaters seemingly hobbled by horror stories about its onerous production problems, critics generally agree that World War Z amounts to, as Liam Lacey describes it in the Toronto Globe and Mail, “a perfectly decent thriller.” Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times remarks that “unless you knew about the film’s troubled past, […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: THE INTERNSHIP

Anyone who has ever worked for a software company has probably dreamed at one time or another about getting a job at Google, which has managed to make virtually every list of best places on earth to work. Those dreamers are likely to form a core group of moviegoers who will turn out to see […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: THE PURGE

The Purge is one of those B-movies made on a microbudget of $3 million whose charm principally comes from the fact that it was made on a microbudget of $3 million. It’s about a future world in which all crime is forbidden for 364 days but is permitted on day 365. It has received quite […]

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