Category: Monday Morning Movie Reviewer

Jon Stewart’s directorial debut isn’t really worth rushing out to watch in theaters–but few people are anyway–and I think it’ll find a proper home on Netflix or HBO, where more people will likely see it and that’s probably the right move. At least half the movie is intimate two-person scenes set in a tight interrogation…

If you haven’t heard of Whiplash yet, do yourself a favor and look it up, OR, even better, go to the nearest theater playing it and buy a ticket. This is a movie that will definitely make my top 10 Best of the year list. What Works: The plot seems deceptively simple as we watch…

An excellent film that serves as a cracked-mirror version of last month’s ignored gem “Kill the Messenger.” Whereas that film was all about good journalism (and journalists) getting buried by a lazy, defensive media, this is the polar opposite as we watch a sociopath climb up the ranks of ridiculously voyeuristic “news” more interested in…

Maybe it says something about the soft bigotry of low expectations towards Keanu Reeves movies, but this thing has received very positive reviews for what is—essentially—a fairly standard revenge film. Still, there are hundreds of small surprises and upgrades that make it feel a lot more satisfying and worth watching. What Works: “John Wick” starts…

Sucks. Maybe “sucks” is too strong a word, but unlike “Men, Women, Children” this film does deserve its rotten tomatoes rating and weak box office performance. What Works: It’s about an amnesiac woman (Nicole Kidman) who wakes up everyday with no memory, but her husband (Colin Firth) and psychiatrist (Mark Strong) both want to help…

I’m stunned that this film has a horrendous 29% on rotten tomatoes. [But maybe not so stunned it’s a box office flop.] It’s just a reminder that every so often, the majority of critics get it wrong, and actually pander to broad-audience films a lot more than they should (that October’s other Jennifer Garner movie Alexander and…

This Reese Witherspoon-starrer (that doesn’t really star Reese) has just about left theaters, but I think this is more the kind of movie you watch at home anyway. That way there’s no judgment when you happen to cry during some of the more obvious tear-jerker moments. The first third of this movie is about several Sudanese…

A vibrant, offbeat animated tale that never quite becomes this decade’s “Nightmare Before Christmas” but is still well-worth watching. What Works: This has not been the best year for animated movies, and it feels like a lot of the major players have pretty much written off 2014. [Pixar didn’t even release anything this year, after…

Every now and again, a great film falls through the cracks. Kill the Messenger is one of the year’s very best but is not quite getting the critical or commercial respect it deserves, and I doubt most people have even heard it. What Works: The movie is the true story of Gary Webb (Jeremy Renner,…

This is a tough one because on the one hand, I should be thrilled to watch a movie clearly made for adults (there’s been a grand total of 9 of them this year) and there’s not a zombie or superhero in sight, but the movie also isn’t very good. Do you give Robert Downey Jr. points for…

I wasn’t too surprised when this movie turned out to be bad, and no one else should be either… What Works: Ummm…well…uhhh…[crickets chirping]…Game of Thrones’ Charles Dance is always worth watching and he’s more menacing than ever as a very old vampire… What Doesn’t Work: So many things. For one, they tease out that Dance’s…

“Gone Girl” is a hard film to review because it’s based on a book I would consider to be a masterpiece of “genre” fiction (technically a mystery/thriller but really more a deep psychological profile of a psychopath and a marriage folded into a thriller framework), and unlike 99.99 percent of books, it was a monster…