A strong cast helps put across what is a somewhat muddled political drama.  Mark Wahlberg stars as a former NYC cop pushed off the force due to his role in a shooting (for which he is publicly exonerated).  Seven years […]

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Kathryn Bigelow’s follow-up to The Hurt Locker is a tough, brutal, violent, somber, contemporary war drama that examines how we have fought the war on terror in the Middle East, and, eventually, caught Osama bin Laden.  It has to be tough, […]

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I saw the preview for this movie so many times that I actually delayed seeing the movie until today.  I shouldn’t have waited; Life of Pi is an amazing movie in many ways and definitely worth seeing.  It is philosophically ambiguous, […]

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Yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger is back, out of politics and up on the big screen where he belongs.  Of course, one can read political meanings into this story of a tough Arizona sheriff determined to prevent a drug cartel kingpin (the […]

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Some movies that address controversial issues or situations tend to dance around the details of their stories, afraid of offending one side or the other.  When this happens those movies never quite pack the punch that they promise.  Such is […]

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Making a movie about one of the most horrific natural disasters in human history is undoubtedly a daunting task, yet Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona has tackled it and produced a film that is, by turns, harrowing, touching, devastating and […]

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Even after seeing Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie I still have misgivings about it, but I cannot deny that it is something special.  Like most of Tarantino’s films it fudges genre conventions, contains glaring anachronisms (particularly involving music), has gorgeous dialogue, […]

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I confess to not having read any of Lee Child’s “Jack Reacher” novels, but I am aware that as described in those books the main character is described as being quite tall and large.  Hardly Tom Cruise.  However, this being […]

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Unlike The Guilt Trip, a dramatic comedy which offers few chuckles, the somewhat clunky family comedy Parental Guidance promises and delivers a host of belly laughs, courtesy of Billy Crystal, who hasn’t had a movie this funny in a long, long […]

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Readers of the print version of Filmbobbery may recall that I was never excited about any of the Lord of the Rings movies.  I gave them all three stars because they are all obviously well produced and delivered what they promised, but […]

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