Prisoners Review
RATING: (4 STARS) Prisoners is the most tightly plotted 153-minute movie you’ll ever see. It’s a masterpiece of the crime genre that covers a lot of ground, but every crumb, clue, and detail dropped by director Denis Villeneuve and screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski is essential to its (murky-ish) resolution. Comparisons to films like Se7en and Zodiac […]
Lee Daniels’ The Butler Review
RATING: (3 STARS) If The Paperboy was director Lee Daniels unfettered, Lee Daniels’ The Butler (henceforth to be referred to as The Butler) is a film clearly saddled with self-importance. The film opens with a quote and closes with a dedication, but those are far from the only clues hinting that Daniels has big things […]
The Company You Keep Review
RATING: (2 STARS) If there’s one thing to take away from Robert Redford’s The Company We Keep, it’s that few individuals keep better company than Redford. No film this year (unless, in the cast of Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder, we’re counting the many great actors and actresses missing from the final cut) boasts a […]
On the Road Review
RATING: (3 STARS) A big-screen adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s seminal novel On the Road was always going to be love-it-or-hate-it. Its reputation will lead the uninitiated to have inflated expectations, and the very novelistic nature of the material will cause Kerouac devotees to expect the worst. Count me in the camp of the former. Sadly, […]
The Princess and the Frog Review
RATING: (3.5 STARS) I’m not sure how this delightful film slipped through the cracks until now, but The Princess and the Frog (like Fantastic Mr. Fox the same year) is proof that Pixar isn’t the only studio that can turn out high-quality animated films that work for both children and adults (granted this is a […]
Iron Man Review
RATING: (3.5 STARS) I remember when I first heard that Robert Downey Jr. would be playing the title character in Jon Favreau’s “Iron Man.†The project itself just sounded like another superhero movie (a genre I thought was growing tired), but the casting choice was inspired. It was shortly after I discovered “Kiss Kiss, Bang […]
