MOVIE REVIEWS: LOCKOUT

The French-made (produced and co-written by Luc Besson) English-language Lockout is arriving without a single positive review from a critic at a major-market newspaper. It is, writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times, “as dopey an entertainment as imaginable.” However, she allows, “it’s also a reminder that the film’s star, Guy Pearce, has always […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: THE HUNGER GAMES

On the whole, critics’ reviews of The Hunger Games are overwhelmingly positive — but they’re not without reservations, plenty of them. Kyle Smith in the New York Post, for example, comments that while it “may be derivative … it is engrossing and at times exciting.” But he then goes on to remark, “Plotwise, the movie […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1 is due to open in thousands of theaters at midnight tonight, but several major critics are in no rush to get out early reviews, probably figuring that the teenage girls who are the prime target for this franchise are not avid readers of their comments. Besides, it […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: FINAL DESTINATION 5

Horror movies rarely receive positive reviews, and the fifth Final Destination movie is no exception. (The previous four didn’t fare much better.) Mike Hale refers to a line in the movie in which a character remarks, “It’s just that I’ve seen this before.” Hale calls the line “too depressingly true to be funny.” Likewise Betsy […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: THE SMURFS

The Smurfs is receiving little of the admiration that critics bestowed on that other movie with characters who were blue and in 3D. But here and there it is picking up some mostly favorable reviews. Neil Genzlinger in the New York Times observes that the funniest moments in the movie “are either raunchy or scandalous,” […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: WINNIE THE POOH

“Oh, bother,” as Winnie the Pooh would say. Or, “Oh, fluff and stuff.” Everybody loves Winnie the Pooh, but there are probably relatively few everybodies who will be taking their kids to see the latest Pooh adventure this weekend — what with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 making its debut. Winnie […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: HORRIBLE BOSSES

If television sitcoms were raunchier, they would be like Seth Gordon’s Horrible Bosses, some critics suggest. “For all of this movie’s aspirations to be out-there,” writes Kyle Smith in the New York Post, “it relies on the staple of the sitcom mentality. Sitcom scripts are hacked together in a few days, and rely on dumb-guy […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: HANNA

To paraphrase the common cliché: You reads your critics and you takes your choice. Either Hanna is an intelligent top-of-the-line thriller, or its a pretentious over-the-top deceit — the critics are divided almost equally. Among those praising it is Roger Ebert, who writes in the Chicago Sun-Times: “Hanna is good, sound filmmaking. It depends on […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: JUSTIN BIEBER: NEVER SAY NEVER

It’s curious that in all of the reviews of Never Say Never, which chronicles the meteoric rise of 16-year-old Justin Bieber from his obscure roots in Stratford, Ontario, Canada to his sold-out performance in Madison Square, there is not a single reference to an earlier teen idol’s remarkably similar journey. Ricky Nelson had in fact […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: THE DILEMMA

The real dilemma that critics are facing in reviewing The Dilemma, starring Vince Vaughn and Kevin James, is figuring out what kind of a movie it is. Is it a comedy, like Ron Howard’s Splash or Parenthood, or is it a poignant relationship movie involving two straight male friends? Well, it turns out that it’s […]

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