Category: Monday Morning Movie Reviewer

Sometimes a movie opens and you can just tell it’s destined to slip through the cracks and be underrated. Promised Land is already one of those movies, as it opened and died in theaters this weekend and is unlikely to get any Oscar nominations when those are announced on Thursday. And yet, it’s my pick…

A big studio film with the soul of an independent movie, and a damn good one too. What Works: I liked this movie more than I really could have anticipated. Whereas some of Judd Apatow’s previous films (like The 40 Year-Old Virgin and the overrated Knocked Up) jumped off from a high-concept premise but gradually…

This is a bit of a cheat since it aired on television, but HBO’s The Girl feels enough like a real movie to warrant a review. It has at least two recognizable stars (Sienna Miller, Toby Jones), and a biographical story (about Alfred Hitchcock’s obsession with actress Tippi Hedren, his star in The Birds and Marnie) that…

It’s hard to imagine anyone falling in love with this movie, but it’s hard to imagine anyone outright hating it either. It’s really a big shoulder-shrug, the type of “take-it-or-leave-it” entertainment that few people will run out to see, but it’s a pleasant enough time around the holidays, and a pretty good movie for sons…

This “movie” is really bits and pieces of the Cirque Du Soleil shows in Vegas, all strung together with the thinnest of plots. Basically, there’s a girl, and there’s a guy, and they are in loooooooooooove or something like that, but they are “separated” by the Cirque worlds they have to get through to be…

This movie may be slightly better than you think…but only slightly. What Works: At the center is a pretty generic thriller that feels more like a 90’s movie than one in 2012 (the pretty blonde female lead, the basic plot, generic villains, a slightly-damaged hero who’s not really that damaged, the plodding plot, the jokey…

Is “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” (although, really, who can call this an unexpected journey? the lack of self-awareness in keeping that subtitle is staggering) a bad movie? Not at all. It’s a solid spectacle, and arguably more fun than much of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the problem is that it really isn’t…

I wasn’t really a fan of this movie, but it’s worth reviewing simply because, well, I saw it…But I’ll make it brief since everyone really just wants to talk about The Hobbit (which I will, a little later on today)… What Works: This updating of the classic story will probably please fans of the material,…

This movie is pretty much exactly what’s wrong with Hollywood. The “plot” (or, more accurately, marketing gimmick) revolves around the “new idea” that a lot of the most famous characters on Earth (Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, etc.) are actually action heroes that fight the forces of darkness. It employs the trendy mass-market concept…

I liked this movie, and it gets a little better the more I think about it. [Disregard the ultra-harsh F cinemascore rating, if people knew what a good movie was, Taken 2 wouldn’t have gotten an A.] While you’re watching it, there may be a certain impatience that sets in as you watch hitmen, thieves,…

I really liked this movie. Will you? That all depends. Depends largely on how much you like the style of sometimes dramatic/sometimes-comedic director David O. Russell (I Heart Huckabees, The Fighter, Three Kings) who’s fully operating in dramedy mode, criss-crossing between dramatic scenes that are hilarious and comedic scenes that are maybe trying just a…

I loved this movie. This is the type of rousing, sharp, entirely perceptive big-studio drama that Hollywood almost doesn’t make anymore. [It’s telling that a man many credit with “ruining” the adult aesthetic of the 70’s, Steven Spielberg, is now making some of the most mature and sophisticated films out there.] Some may think it’s…

This is the rare movie I wish I had seen in 3D. [I’m told it has some of the best 3D since Avatar.] And even in two dimensions, Ang Lee’s latest wildcard is visually stunning. The problem I have is that the look of the movie wowed me but it kept me at arm’s length…