Though director Yaron Zilberman’s first feature A Late Quartet often looks like another episode of “As the World Turns,” or perhaps more apropos, “The Young and the Restless,” its nuanced performances are always dignified and deeply affecting and its look at the discipline it takes to become a successful music group, classical or otherwise, is…
From the page to the stage to the screen, it’s been quite the journey for Les Misérables. Once Victor Hugo’s novel, then Cameron Mackintosh’s stage musical, and now Tom Hooper’s movie, the beloved tale of lives in the gutters of 19th century France hits the big screen in musical form looking, well, almost identical to…
Take some of his more familiar action vehicles (“Minority Report,” “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” etc.) and add a dash of Bourne, “The Shooter” and even “JFK,” and you have a Tom Cruise film that, while certainly not his best, is quite effective, entertaining and keeps the suspense simmering until the last bullet has been…
Directed by Anne Fletcher (“The Proposal“), the newest Paramount release The Guilt Trip is a mixed bag — or hodgepodge, if you will — of productions such as “Tommy Boy,” “Broken Flowers” and any number of road pictures made over the last 60 years. That’s not to say it is a bad movie, indeed it…
When I’m not in the bathroom painting the porcelain canvas, I’m waging war with the Cyclops. But while Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous novel lacks one-eyed beasts, it’s no doubt masturbatory. From a meandering script (conceived by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Jackson, and Guillermo del Toro) that doesn’t stick to a single body of…
Joe Wright should win the award for most courageous director of the year. The majority of Anna Karenina is filmed in a theater with all of the sets built on and around a main stage including a skating rink, a grassy field, a snowy train station, and even a horse race. It is not claustrophobic,…
There’s a unique sprinkling of cinematic magic that touches the infamous shower scene in “Psycho” so memorably and effectively that watching the scene, dissecting the scene, experiencing the scene is great fun from any angle. So with this automatic reaction hardwired to my senses, I very much enjoyed seeing the scene recreated with moderate gusto…
