Before the release of Ben Affleck’s surefire hit Argo, the film garnered a ton of positive press from movie people and really pissed-off chatter from, specifically, grumpy Canadians. The film is a topical period piece in the same way that Charlie Wilson’s War used a story from the 1980s to say something current about the […]
When I walked out of the movie theatre after seeing The Dark Knight Rises, I was conflicted. Certainly, I didn’t hate it. It does all the things a good summer superhero movie should do. It made me want to eat popcorn and fight crime. It’s got great action sequences, punchy dialogue, a sense of the […]
Looper, the newest sci-fi thriller from wunderkind director Rian Johnson, is a rare thing: it’s a perfect movie. By that I don’t mean it’s the world’s best movie, or even the year’s best. What I mean is that Johnson and his crew created a movie that manages to perfectly embody its own story and […]
With found footage movies on life support, writer and director David Ayer hopes to reanimate the genre with his first-person buddy cop action film, End of Watch. Having written Training Day, Mr. Ayer certainly had the street credentials for the job, but his flashy and ornate homage to the television show Cops, the original forbearer […]
If you’re going to see Nicholas Jarecki’s high finance thriller, Arbitrage, make sure to bring an Economics major with you. For one, he or she could tell you what ‘arbitrage’ means and how it applies to the film, and, for two, they can help you follow the serpentine and occasionally muddled script. Unlike 2011’s Margin […]
Oliver Stone’s Savages is his best work in years. Or so the poster says. Given the slump Stone has been in since 2004’s epic failure Alexander, that’s not saying much. The film has been adapted from a book with the same name. I have not read the book and seeing the film did not encourage me […]
I was really looking forward to Magic Mike. I used to think Channing Tatum was a bit of an oaf, but I started to come around when The Vow proved he can sell a love story, and I was fully on board after he knocked 21 Jump Street out of the comedic park. After that, […]
I have very little patience for movies with plots fueled solely by one character inexplicably not telling another character a key piece of information. My patience is particularly tested when the information in question actually isn’t very damaging. And so this week’s feature, People Like Us, was kind of an exercise in patience. The central […]