Category: Monday Morning Movie Reviewer

What a piece of garbage. Although I’m not knocked-out by Lone Survivor (review later today) I am thrilled that moviegoers made it a smash at the box office over this obviously dumber, louder, cruder film. What Works: If you’re looking for a good Mystery Science Theater-style movie to go watch with your friends and mock…

Every once and a while a movie comes along that works on nearly every level, but just doesn’t grab you for some reason. “August: Osage County” is funny, expertly acting, finely scripted, well-directed, etc. but I just didn’t feel really compelled by anything I was watching on screen. Maybe it’s the fact that from the…

Real quick, just a couple more reviews of little loved movies after a day that’s seen 20 total movie reviews, and even more tomorrow… Stand Up Guys…This movie (about Al Pacino getting out of jail and Christopher Walken being his oldest friend in the world who’s also asked to kill him by ten the next…

For some reason, this film isn’t connecting with audiences or critics much, and I’m not entirely sure why. Is it a truly good movie with no flaws? No. Does it accomplish everything it wants to be? Well, no to that too. But I can’t say it’s bad, and I think it just might stir up…

Two docs about very, very different kinds of obsessives… The Short Game…This Netflix original documentary about children golfers hits all the familiar child-prodigy documentary beats: the pushy parents, the child prodigies who have a hard time with defeat, the kid with the overshadowing sibling (Anna Kournikova’s little brother), the underdog kid, and a lot of…

An excellent film that’s already borderline underrated since audiences don’t seem to be fully responding to it and critics are split on whether it’s a celebration of amoral excess or a satire of it. [A bogus debate if there ever was one, and clearly meant to make the person having it feel morally superior to…

This movie’s already been talked to death, but what’s one more bloviating blogger to the mix? What Works: In this tale of con-men, corrupt politicians, mobbed-up casinos, and a loose canon FBI agent who will break every rule to expose corruption (yet the paradox of this is lost on him) anything feels like it can…

Sure this movie (about two old-time boxers getting back into the ring to settle a score) is contrived, generic, and thoroughly uninspired, but once you get past the “Rocky vs. Raging Bull” marketing hook, you actually get something that could have been a lot worse. What Works: Stallone mostly phones it in doing a variation…

Another slight, pleasant movie that won’t stay with you long enough to really make it worth the trouble to watch. But man when it comes to HBO, watch out, because then you should watch the hell out of it… What Works: This film about the making of a film follows Emma Thompson as the prickly…

Oh boy… What Works: This film about, you guessed it, 47 masterless samurai is admirable in its old-fashioned attitudes. There are only occasional flights into fantasy, and I think the fanboys will be surprised (and disappointed) that there aren’t more battles with mutant monsters instead of sober scenes set in real history. [Of course, if…

A deserved flop… What Works: Even though the animation is realistic, so what? Other dinosaur-based films haven’t looked like The Land Before Time… What Doesn’t Work: This film is very slow and I had a hard time staying awake. The plot is extremely hokey and relies on too many eye-rollingly cheesy moments instead of genuine,…

Let’s get on with it…[This list could be subtitled “heavy-handed metaphors” since even a straight-forward genre pic like Mandy Lane has artier aspirations to really be about sexual paranoia and obsession among teenage boys, and untrustworthy teen girls playing off those emotions.] All the Boys Love Mandy Lane…This long-shelved horror film was supposed to be…

Two documentaries on two very different artists: Cutie and the Boxer follows a temperamental Japanese painter (who literally boxes paint onto canvasses) and the complicated love story with his animator wife. “Ricky Jay: Deceptive Practice” follows the famed magician, card shark, historian of magicians, and student of con games and artists Ricky Jay, but even though Jay’s…