A Star Is Born (2018) Review
RATING: (4 STARS) Though A Star Is Born has been made now four times, the 2018 version directed by Bradley Cooper and starring Cooper and Lady Gaga (in her first major film performance), is my first experience with these story beats. Of course, they’re not unfamiliar ones. It doesn’t take intimate familiarity with the Janet […]
Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 Review
RATING: (3.5 STARS) Ever since Iron Man’s post-credits stinger, each entry in Marvel’s stable of films has sought to build upon the last in an effort to drum up excitement for what’s next. It’s my least favorite thing about modern big-budget moviemaking as it renders just about everything else happening on screen pointless. If you, […]
Aloha Review
RATING: (3 STARS) You’re enjoyment of Cameron Crowe’s Aloha will likely be dependent upon how much you subscribe to and are interested in film’s auteur theory—or the idea that a director’s personal creative vision is the driving force behind a finished onscreen product. Filmmakers like Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, and Martin Scorsese are proof positive […]
2015 Golden Globes Nominations Predictions
The ultra-prestigious and never ridiculous Hollywood Foreign Press Association is on the cusp of announcing its nominees for the 2015 Golden Globes. We should take these nominations very seriously, as the many, many dedicated and serious-minded members of this fine organization consider only the artistic merits of each film, performance, and craft achievement in a […]
Guardians of the Galaxy Review
RATING: (2.5 STARS) “What was it about?” It’s often the first question someone asks me when I tell them about a movie I saw, and it ought to be the easiest one to answer. The first cinematic adaptation of Marvel’s deep-space-set saga Guardians of the Galaxy challenges that notion. Here, a studio has neutered down […]
Predicting the 2014 Golden Globes Winners
This Sunday, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association will carve for itself a unique place in the 2013/2014 awards season. How do I know? Because it must. There still isn’t much consensus among this year’s major categories. The critics groups like 12 Years a Slave and Her. American Hustle and Gravity have loads of support—some from […]
American Hustle Review
RATING: (3.5 STARS) Of many great pleasures found in David O. Russell’s latest, American Hustle, the greatest is watching not one, not two, not three, not four, but FIVE talented actors give truly exceptional performances. Jeremy Renner is the only Russell newcomer, as the Silver Linings Playbook and The Fighter helmer has brought together an […]
The Place Beyond the Pines Review
RATING: (3.5 STARS) “So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.’” —John 5:19 Derek Cianfrance burst onto the American independent movie scene with 2010’s searing […]
Silver Linings Playbook Review
RATING: (4 STARS) Silver Linings Playbook is a bright rainbow of a film, but you wouldn’t know it from the way it starts. It’s hard to imagine that a film that opens in a mental hospital with a clearly disturbed Bradley Cooper could, in two hours, convincingly make the leap to a larger-than-life dance competition […]
The 2013 Oscar Nominees
It wasn’t Lincoln‘s field-topping twelve nominations nor Silver Linings Playbook‘s sudden ascension from “happy to be nominated” to “genuine Best Picture threat” that dominated headlines today. 

No, it was the genuinely stunning absence of Argo‘s Ben Affleck and Zero Dark Thirty‘s Kathryn Bigelow from the Academy’s eclectic Best Director lineup that rocked Oscar watchers’ world. […]
The Words Review
RATING: (2 STARS) Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal—the writing-directing duo behind The Words—go through such pains to make their film (which is about novelists) feel like a novel that it loses sense of its more cinematic qualities. The Words moves at a glacial pace. It’s overwritten. Its stately score and incredibly formal look make the entire exercise feel […]
Limitless Review
RATING: (1.5 STARS) For a movie about people who are amazingly smart, Limitless sure is dumb. Director Neil Burger’s thriller looks flashy, but the characters and situations are groan-inducing to say the least. I found myself enjoying it to a certain extent in the beginning, but as it progresses, it becomes mind-numbingly stupid. Sure, its […]
The A-Team Review
RATING: (1.5 STARS) In some ways, director Joe Carnahan’s “The A-Team†is a harmless summer flick—mindless and fitfully entertaining. In other ways, it represents the worst kind of cinema—wholly unoriginal, bland, and immediately forgettable. I think if I waited another day or two to write this review, I wouldn’t be able to. That’s how soon […]
