Cloud Atlas is a sprawling, ambitious drama with a strong cast, intriguing science-fiction elements, solid production values and impressive visuals.  But it’s also a big mess without a unifying theme.  Six stories set in time periods varying from 1850 to the […]

Sometimes you walk into a movie theater expecting a certain kind of movie and walk out having seen something completely different.  It can be disconcerting, and even create a negative reaction just because it something unexpected.  This is the reaction […]

If Summit Entertainment is hoping that Alex Cross is going to start another popular film franchise (the almost finished Twilight series is theirs), that hope is misguided. James Patterson’s inimitable forensic psychologist-detective was played in two previous films (Kiss the Girls, Along […]

I would never have thought that a movie that combines elements of Mr. Holland’s Opus and Rocky could be so entertaining, even though I really like those two films. Here Comes the Boom is a funny and heartwarming mix of downtrodden school […]

As yet another in the parade of gritty modern cop thrillers — almost all of them set in the City of Angels — End of Watch distinguishes itself only in the palpable partnership established between fellow cops Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) […]

Among my favorite aspects of cinema occurs when someone unearths a particularly fascinating bit of history and then recreates that history in a well-made movie.  When this happens history comes alive as drama that transcends personal experience to reveal ourselves […]

Most kids love the old, classic monsters, and I am no exception.  Those old classics, somewhat re-imagined, are all present in Hotel Transylvania — Dracula, the Mummy, the Werewolf, Frankenstein’s Monster (simply but incorrectly named just plain Frankenstein), the Invisible Man — along […]