The end has finally arrived for The Twilight Saga, in a fifth film that brings the story to a crescendo of decapitating action before freeing its vampires and shape-shifters to follow their dreams. If, indeed, vampires and shape-shifters dream, since […]
Continue reading »Category: Recent Releases
Skyfall (2012) ☆ ☆ ☆
Skyfall is a strange, atypical James Bond adventure. It doesn’t look, feel or sound like a Bond film at various points, and yet the overriding feeling at the end is that the series has restarted, and in a good way. I […]
Continue reading »The Sessions (2012) ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2
It would be easy to label The Sessions as Helen Hunt’s sex movie, since she portrays a sex surrogate and is naked for much of her performance, but that would be a disservice to the potency of Ben Lewin’s movie. The […]
Continue reading »Cloud Atlas (2012) ☆ ☆
Cloud Atlas is a sprawling, ambitious drama with a strong cast, intriguing science-fiction elements, solid production values and impressive visuals. But it’s also a big mess without a unifying theme. Six stories set in time periods varying from 1850 to the […]
Continue reading »Flight (2012) ☆ ☆ 1/2
Sometimes you walk into a movie theater expecting a certain kind of movie and walk out having seen something completely different. It can be disconcerting, and even create a negative reaction just because it something unexpected. This is the reaction […]
Continue reading »Alex Cross (2012) ☆ ☆
If Summit Entertainment is hoping that Alex Cross is going to start another popular film franchise (the almost finished Twilight series is theirs), that hope is misguided. James Patterson’s inimitable forensic psychologist-detective was played in two previous films (Kiss the Girls, Along […]
Continue reading »Here Comes the Boom (2012) ☆ ☆ ☆
I would never have thought that a movie that combines elements of Mr. Holland’s Opus and Rocky could be so entertaining, even though I really like those two films. Here Comes the Boom is a funny and heartwarming mix of downtrodden school […]
Continue reading »End of Watch (2012) ☆ ☆ 1/2
As yet another in the parade of gritty modern cop thrillers — almost all of them set in the City of Angels — End of Watch distinguishes itself only in the palpable partnership established between fellow cops Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) […]
Continue reading »Argo (2012) ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2
Among my favorite aspects of cinema occurs when someone unearths a particularly fascinating bit of history and then recreates that history in a well-made movie. When this happens history comes alive as drama that transcends personal experience to reveal ourselves […]
Continue reading »Hotel Transylvania (2012) ☆ ☆ ☆
Most kids love the old, classic monsters, and I am no exception. Those old classics, somewhat re-imagined, are all present in Hotel Transylvania — Dracula, the Mummy, the Werewolf, Frankenstein’s Monster (simply but incorrectly named just plain Frankenstein), the Invisible Man — along […]
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