MOVIE REVIEWS: FLIGHT

While virtually every review of Flight, starring Denzel Washington, is positive, those reviews are mostly tempered by some hard-edged criticism. Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle spends the first 90 percent of his review praising the performances, Robert Zemeckis’s direction, and the taut script by John Gatins. “Now for the bad news,” he writes […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: ALEX CROSS

Tyler Perry rarely allows critics to view his movies before they’re released. Alex Cross is the first movie he has starred in that he didn’t also write and direct (and it’s a significant departure from the previous ones). But it might have been wise for Lionsgate, which is releasing the film, to have dispensed with […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: LOOPER

Critics are scrambling aboard the time machine that is Looper and are seemingly enjoying the ride. With few exceptions, they are praising the plot, the dialog, the direction, editing, and the performances of Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing the same character at different ages. Manohla Dargis focuses on the director in her New York […]

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 […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE

Trouble with the Curve isn’t a great Clint Eastwood flick, critics agree, but he certainly gives a more effective performance in it than he did at the Republican National Convention earlier this month, they say. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times calls it “a superior entertainment, moving down somewhat predictable paths with an authenticity and […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: DREDD 3D

Critics are assuring their readers that it’s OK to enter theaters showing Dredd 3D with low expectations — particularly if they already have seen the flop that Sylvester Stallone created out of the graphic-novel character. Indeed, comments Sean O’Connell in the Washington Post, the new Dredd “proves far superior to the corny misfire attempted by […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: ARBITRAGE

Although it is opening in fewer than 200 theaters this weekend, critics are suggesting that you pass up the movies playing in thousands of them and take in Nicholas Jarecki’s Arbitrage starring Richard Gere. This is Jarecki’s debut as a writer-director, and it is an auspicious one. Writes Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal: […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: THE MASTER

The Master opens tonight in just three theaters in New York and two in Los Angeles. Presumably they’re among the few in the country — perhaps the only ones — that remain capable of projecting 70mm film. While some critics praise director Paul Thomas Anderson’s commitment to the medium of film, others suggest that the […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: THE CAMPAIGN

Kyle Smith, the politically conservative film critic for the New York Post lets loose a torrent of zingers at The Campaign, starring Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis, concluding with the unkindest jibe of all: “Put it this way,” he writes, “Jimmy Carter was funnier than this movie.” He concludes: “My friends, I’ve seen some terrible […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: TOTAL RECALL

A remake of a movie titled Total Recall practically begs for puns. And the press has obliged with an outpouring of groaners. Ty Burr in the Boston Globe quips: “In the end, here’s the worst sin of this slick, high-octane memory play: It’s forgettable.” The headline of Joe Morgenstern’s review in the Wall Street Journal […]

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