MOVIE REVIEWS: END OF WATCH

Once again, a small, auteur work is garnering over-the-top praise from critics even while they are pummeling far more lavish productions.  With a handful of dissents, they generally agree that writer-director David Ayer has again created a classic police drama. End of Watch is, writes Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times, “rare in its […]

BERLINALE JURY MEETS THE PRESS

The ever-provocative British director Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies, Vera Drake, Happy-Go-Lucky, Another Year) showed that he has not dampened his sometimes incendiary sentiments as he appeared with the other members of the Berlin Film Festival’s jury at a news conference today (Thursday). Leigh, who is this year’s jury president, remarked at first that the […]

WHAT’S UP (AT THE MOVIES), DOC?

Easter may be more than three weeks away, but the teenage son of the Easter Bunny is arriving early at movie theaters this weekend and capturing the family audience until the real holiday comes along. Hop — a hybrid live/computer-generated film, is expected to earn around $25 million, despite dismal reviews. Box-office forecasters say that […]

WRITER EXPOSES APPARENT CONFLICT OF INTEREST AT AOL COMPANIES

A writer for TechCrunch.com, which was acquired last year by AOL, was asked by a representative for Moviefone, also owned by AOL, to “tone down” an article she wrote about Summit Entertainment’s The Source Code, starring Jake Gyllenhaal. (The rep wrote that Summit Entertainment felt the article “was a little snarky.”) Instead of complying, the […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: LOVE & OTHER DRUGS

Critics invariably complain that the latest romantic comedy to hit the megaplex is formulaic and cliché-ridden. That’s not the case with their reviews of Love & Other Drugs. Quite the opposite. As Christopher Kelly puts it in the Dallas Morning News: “Rarely has a movie strained so hard to seem original and come off so […]

WHO WILL CAST THE BIGGEST SPELL AT BOX OFFICE?

Four new movies are arriving at theaters over the Thanksgiving holiday, including what some are saying will likely be Disney’s last animated feature based on a popular fairy tale, Tangled. But none of them is likely to earn more than Week 2 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, analysts say. The penultimate […]

PRINCE OF PERSIA MAKES SOLID HOME VIDEO DEBUT

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which was a disappointment at the domestic box office, where it grossed $90 million — it cost $200 million to make– but whose worldwide gross came to $327 million was a trifecta winner in its first week out on home video. The Disney film, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, was […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: “PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME”

Films based on the videogames have mostly had a dreadful track record at the box office and an even worse one with critics. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time appears to be no exception. Some critics observe that there appear to be as many digital effects in the film as in the game. One […]

“ROBIN HOOD” RESCUED BY OVERSEAS AUDIENCES

Overseas, Robin Hood, titled in French Robin des Bois, meaning Robin of the Woods, found itself out of them — the woods, that is — after the movie prevailed as the top film of the weekend for the second week in a row. While if opened softly in North America — it took in just […]