I’ll cut to the chase in my description of Playing for Keeps right away. It’s simply “Kicking & Screaming” with sex — and without Will Ferrell (if the two are mutually exclusive). It also proves that if you are Gerard Butler and arrive in town to coach a child’s soccer team, several deranged women will…
Screwed is a surprise; the monochromatic DVD cover masking a film that is simplistic yet intelligent, gritty but also emotionally in check, a scrappy little crime drama anchored by an above-the-grade performance from James D’Arcy (turning in equally strong work in “Cloud Atlas” this year). Based on the book by Ronnie Thompson, a former prison…
Let’s not mince words here: Sinister scared the fucking shit out of me, and that is not an accolade I hand out lightly. It’s rare to stumble upon a truly scary movie in this day and age; the horror genre has grown stale of late, with filmmakers constantly wasting our time with predictable jump scares…
Coming after the failure of singer/songwriter Paul Simon’s solo album Hearts and Bones, and the messy breakup with Art Garfunkel, his 1986 album Graceland was the most successful of his career and, to many, the artistic highlight. Simon’s return to South Africa to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Graceland is documented in Joe Berlinger’s exuberant…
Why is the Twilight series exponentially more popular than the more intriguing “Interview with the Vampire?” Anne Rice’s Louis and Lestat witness history, carry around significant emotional baggage, and speak dialogue worthy of a screenwriter. The Twilight Saga vampires are wooden caricatures, repeat the 12th grade over and over again, and carry on some of…
It seems strange to criticize a movie for its beauty, especially considering the chief architect of that beauty is a filmmaker as visually and poetically gifted as Ang Lee, but beauty is exactly what fells the beast in Lee’s glossy Life of Pi. Adapted rather faithfully from Yann Martel’s celebrated 2001 novel of the same…
Dreamworks, which scored last year with “Kung Fu Panda 2” and earlier in 2012 with “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted,” brings another ambitious animated film to the screen with the telling of William Joyce’s book, Rise of the Guardians. And while not as colorful or giddy as the above-mentioned pictures, this combination of “The Polar…
