Category: Monday Morning Movie Reviewer

I’ve written before that the current age of critics seems very tough on both issue-driven domestic indies and also middle-brow dramas, well, “Black or White” is both so, naturally, they royally screwed up reviewing this film. This is a movie that doesn’t romanticize or demonize any of its main characters, and pulls off the tricky balancing act of presenting…

Don’t make the same mistake I did and see this in a theater. This is an Oscar nominee for Best Animated Film that 99 percent of people will never hear of, and I think it would be a much better movie to watch at home when expectations are a lot more…”reasonable.” What Works: It’s a story seeped in…

A crop of unconventional (and largely unsatisfying) thrillers from 2014 that somehow slipped through the cracks when they were initially released… Under the Skin…This is primarily known as the movie where ScarJo gets naked, and the movie seems slyly aware of that since her predatory alien lures horny men to their doom. The problem with…

Will any movie about the Southeast get it right? Maybe one day…but today brings reviews of two Southern thrillers (apparently both set in Texas, but Joe feels more like deep Appalachia…in1977) that have twists and are never unwatchable, but maybe aren’t as authentic or common-sense based as they should to be. Joe…Even though the director…

I think some of the “controversy” over American Sniper feels so much like posturing, it’s almost surreal. Are there really liberals out there who are surprised that a U.S. infantryman doesn’t particularly like Iraqis or doesn’t feel awful for doing his job of killing people? I mean…really? The fact that people from Michael Moore to Bill Maher…

One of this year’s Best Picture nominees and you can sure tell because it feels like “Oscar Bait” should be the unofficial subtitle. Although, between this and Britain’s other prestige “Oscar Bait” movie, The Theory of Everything, I liked this one a lot more. “The Imitation Game” is square and old-fashioned, but always just a…

This Russian-language film is up for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards, and it just might win, but that really won’t matter much while you’re watching it or—more likely—not watching it. What Works: It’s a clever idea to interpret the story of Job in a contemporary Russian setting, and the Leviathan of the title isn’t an…

Personal Note: I have been to Selma, Alabama exactly once for a—strangely enough—scholar’s bowl tournament and it’s a place that is nearly as “unchanged by time” as Cuba. Maybe it was just the part I saw, but most of the buildings looked like they hadn’t changed much since MLK visited, and one guy in the tournament said…

For almost anyone who sees it, this movie is going to be love it or hate it. And like most things that are “love it or hate it,” I felt strangely neutral to it. It’s set in 1970, and is really about the exact moment the freewheeling 60’s began to morph into the scuzzy, Nixonian paranoia of…

So…this isn’t a very good movie, but it’s not 31% on Rotten Tomatoes bad either. It’s the worst film of the usually-excellent director Michael Mann’s that I’ve actually seen, but it turns out that even the worst film from Michael Mann is better than most. What Works: It’s no surprise that a director drawn to highly systematic…

This movie sucks. I really don’t think hardcore action fans are going to go bananas for this watered-down, PG-13 action. And Liam Neeson fans (myself included) are going to be left wondering when (if ever) the great-actor version of Liam Neeson is coming back. What Works: [Crickets] What Doesn’t: It’s depressing to see actors of Leland…

A solid film, but a somewhat misleading title as there’s not much actual violence in it. I mention that because I think the wrong type of person might go see this expecting a Tarantino-style bloodbath but it’s actually a much quieter and moodier crime film that is just barely a crime film at all. It’s…

By now, the infamous “The Interview” is actually underrated. All the controversy and hype—none of it at the level anyone involved with the film ever thought it would be—has actually caused a backlash against the movie. Critics aren’t really getting behind it like they should, and now conservatives are equating seeing the movie with patriotism but concede…