Director Paul Greengrass specializes in suspense with real-world ramifications and meaning. Sometimes his subjects are more action-oriented and symbolic in nature (the Jason Bourne films or Green Zone) while others are more historical and fact-based (Bloody Sunday, United 93 and this […]
Continue reading »Category: Recent Releases
Prisoners (2013) ☆ ☆ 1/2
I didn’t write a single review in October, and that was due to Prisoners, a movie which I am still internally debating. On the one hand, it is a suspenseful thriller, dealing with the mysterious disappearances of two children, and […]
Continue reading »The Family (2013) ☆ ☆
We might as well get accustomed to the notion that Robert De Niro’s career has entered a nostalgic phase. The Family casts De Niro as a former gangster clearly modeled on his Goodfellas persona; in fact, the film literally references that earlier […]
Continue reading »Enough Said (2013) ☆ ☆ ☆
This quirky romantic comedy is James Gandolfini’s next-to-last film (he had also completed Animal Rescue, which is in post-production), and it presents him in a very flattering light. He is a lonely divorcee who begins a romance with lonely masseuse […]
Continue reading »We’re the Millers (2013) ☆ 1/2
Yet another raunchy comedy in which everyone seems to be taking or dealing drugs, swearing like sailors, stripping for a living or willing to do anything for money. The only interest this movie held for me was the casting of […]
Continue reading »Blue Jasmine (2013) ☆ ☆ 1/2
I’m not exactly sure what to make of Woody Allen’s newest movie. It is a pointedly sharp character study of a woman (the Jasmine of the title, Cate Blanchett) who is in desperate need of counseling, therapy, attention and money. […]
Continue reading »The World’s End (2013) ☆ ☆
This British mix of comedy, nostalgia, science-fiction and action is exactly that: a mixed bag. It concerns a reunion of sorts of five now middle-aged friends trying to re-enact a pub crawl, concluding at the title establishment. Things go wrong […]
Continue reading »The Wolverine (2013) ☆ ☆ ☆
Comic book-inspired movies like this often leave me cold, but I must admit that I warmed up quickly to The Wolverine. I cannot judge how faithfully or well it sticks to the literary backstory already produced, as I don’t read […]
Continue reading »R. I. P. D. (2013) ☆ 1/2
Some movies are so blatantly imitative of others that it is difficult to fathom how they were ever allowed to exist. Such is the case with R. I. P. D., which is a pseudo-zombie version of the Men in Black movies […]
Continue reading »Paranoia (2013) ☆ 1/2
I love thrillers but in order to thrill me they must actually be thrilling. Nothing about Paranoia is thrilling, with the possible exception of seeing a bald Harrison Ford. No, not even that. A young up-and-coming computer geek (Liam Hemsworth) at […]
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