As with the case of Lincoln, a one-word surname title for Hitchcock does a disservice to both its material and its audience, as neither movie is a full-fledged biography that one would expect of titles which bring to mind images of […]
Continue reading »Category: Recent Releases
Killing Them Softly (2012) ☆ ☆
I have been remiss lately about keeping up with reviews, and this movie is to blame. I’ve had a difficult time deciding where I stand on it. On one hand, Andrew Dominik’s low-key mobster film is as intricately written as […]
Continue reading »Silver Linings Playbook (2012) ☆ ☆ ☆
I’ve been trying to find an accurate, descriptive term for Silver Linings Playbook and the best I can generate is “unconventional love story.” It isn’t really a comedy, though some of it is pretty funny, and it isn’t really a drama, […]
Continue reading »Red Dawn (2012) ☆ ☆
Imagine if you will that North Korea, with the help of Soviet Russia, uses an EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) weapon against the western United States and then takes advantage of our downed defenses to invade Spokane, Washington. That is the premise […]
Continue reading »Lincoln (2012) ☆ ☆ 1/2
Every new Steven Spielberg movie is an event for me; I consider him to be the greatest American filmmaker of our time. Spielberg’s best films have an immediacy that brings magic to our mundane reality, and which bring the unbelievable […]
Continue reading »Wreck-It Ralph (2012) ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2
Disney studios’ newest animated movie is a loving tribute to the video arcade games so popular twenty and thirty years ago. It is nostalgic but not overly sentimental, preferring to update its old-time protagonists into the more modern universe of […]
Continue reading »Breaking Dawn Part 2 (2012) ☆ ☆ 1/2
The end has finally arrived for The Twilight Saga, in a fifth film that brings the story to a crescendo of decapitating action before freeing its vampires and shape-shifters to follow their dreams. If, indeed, vampires and shape-shifters dream, since […]
Continue reading »Skyfall (2012) ☆ ☆ ☆
Skyfall is a strange, atypical James Bond adventure. It doesn’t look, feel or sound like a Bond film at various points, and yet the overriding feeling at the end is that the series has restarted, and in a good way. I […]
Continue reading »The Sessions (2012) ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2
It would be easy to label The Sessions as Helen Hunt’s sex movie, since she portrays a sex surrogate and is naked for much of her performance, but that would be a disservice to the potency of Ben Lewin’s movie. The […]
Continue reading »Cloud Atlas (2012) ☆ ☆
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 […]
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