MOVIE REVIEWS: SKYFALL

When the last 007 movie, Quantum of Solace, opened in 2008, critics railed at the decision to turn Bond into an action hero. “He is too good for that!” remarked Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. “He is an attitude. Violence for him is an annoyance.” Peter Howell commented in the Toronto Star: “This is […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA

What do monster movies and Adam Sandler movies have in common? Well, usually it’s that they both get lousy reviews. But Hotel Transylvania isn’t really a monster movie — the animated monsters in it are rather cute — and it’s not really an Adam Sandler movie — although Sandler does provide the voice of Dracula. […]

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: OOGIELOVES IN THE BIG BALLOON ADVENTURE

How does a grownup critic seriously review a movie titled Oogieloves in The BIG Balloon Adventure? The answer, judging from those who did: with serious distaste. “If only there were something on screen to keep your adult brain from dissolving into strained peas,” Rafer Guzmán yearningly remarks in Newsday, while acknowledging that the movie is […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: HIT & RUN

Ordinarily studio execs, meticulous students of demographics all, target women with romantic comedies and men with car-chase thrillers. With Hit & Run, which opens today (Wednesday), they’re aiming to capture them all with a rom-com/car-chase flick. And critics aren’t sure whether the ingredients have effectively been blended. It makes for “a strange, but strangely entertaining […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: THE EXPENDABLES 2

Given the surprising success of the original The Expendables, Lionsgate quickly ordered a sequel, and voilá, just two years later, here it is — and it’s nabbing more favorable reviews than its predecessor. Mind you, most of those reviews appear to be written reluctantly. Neil Genzlinger in the New York Times, for example, remarks that […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER

Possibly not since Snakes on a Plane has a movie come along that depended so much on its title to draw audiences as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. “It’s too bad that the film’s concept is way more entertaining than what has ended up on-screen,” writes Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times. That sentiment is […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: SAFE

Safe is expected to bomb at the box office this weekend. If it does, however, it won’t be because of the performance of its star, Jason Statham, which is being praised even by many critics who hate the movie. “There’s nothing terribly original about Safe, but it’s a suitably grimy playground for action cinema’s reigning […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: THE THREE STOOGES

It’s likely that moviegoers’ reaction to The Three Stooges will depend a lot on how they regarded the original shorts that the Stooges turned out with assembly-line rapidity more than a half century ago, because, as Rafer Guzmán puts it in Newsday, The Three Stooges “is a virtual clone job.” Guzmán praises “the inspired impersonations […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: THE CABIN IN THE WOODS

Horror films rarely find a receptive response from critics — until the time they become classics. By and large, The Cabin in the Woods is no exception. But more than a few critics have something positive to say about it. Rafer Guzmán in Newsday, in fact, advises readers to “put it right at the top” […]

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