Unfinished Song, originally to be titled Song for Marion, is a British weepie in the tradition of last year’s Quartet or The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I think of it as Quartet-lite. It’s simple plot consists of pensioner Arthur Harris (Terence Stamp) […]
Continue reading »Month: July 2013
The Lone Ranger (2013) ☆ 1/2
I actually enjoyed the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy a great deal (not the fourth one, however), but I can understand when people refer to those adventures as “over the top” or “overproduced.” I didn’t mind silly extravagances and wild characters […]
Continue reading »Grown Ups 2 (2013) ☆
No need to spend a lot of time on this. As a follow-up to the largely unfunny Grown Ups of 2010, this comedy delivers the same type of goofy slapstick, cringe-worthy wacky character caricatures and surprising cameo appearances. It’s very episodic, […]
Continue reading »White House Down (2013) ☆ ☆ ☆
The second of two 2013 movies in which terrorists attack Washington D.C. (Olympus Has Fallen is the first) is White House Down, a big-budgeted and not very believable romp in which a military coup is thwarted by a prospective Secret Service […]
Continue reading »Now You See Me (2013) ☆ ☆ ☆
I’ve never been a big fan of prestidigitation, or magic, because it is all illusion. Yet Louis Leterrier’s new movie Now You See Me enticingly explores how such illusion is created and sustained, invites skepticism, and mostly succeeds in persuading the […]
Continue reading »The Heat (2013) ☆
Who doesn’t like Sandra Bullock? She’s a sweetie who has made some really charming comedies. Unfortunately, The Heat is not one of them. There are some laughs in this ill-mannered “buddy comedy” which teams tightly-wound FBI agent Bullock with slobby Boston […]
Continue reading »World War Z (2013) ☆ ☆ ☆
Having read Max Brooks’ dramatic “oral history of the zombie war,” the aptly-titled World War Z, it was clear that filmmakers brave enough to tackle the project would be forced (or have the opportunity) to create characters and a narrative […]
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