An opportunistic Irish cop teams up with a by-the-book FBI agent to go after a local group of drug smugglers in The Guard. This movie, starring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle, introduces us to Sgt. Gerry Boyle (Gleeson), who just happens to be a cop from Ireland. In fact, this is the first oddity of […]

A pure sense of hope against a world filled with callous motivations.

The previews for Super 8 make it crystal clear that Steven Spielberg was involved with the film and suggest he played a pretty big role in every part of its development. The end product, quite heavily, feels as if director J.J. Abrams set out to create an homage to Spielberg with this major release. Many films […]

Woody Allen movies are generally a hit-or-miss affair to the extreme. When they hit they really resonate and create wonderful lasting memories that can be shared with new viewers time and again or even with a bunch who’ve already seen the film a dozen times. When they miss they miss so completely that you wonder […]

On a lazy Sunday with little else out that seemed worthy I decided to give Bridesmaids a shot. Why the reluctance? Well, first of all, I think the star, Kristen Wig is cute but I never found her all that funny on Saturday Night Live. They also tried the bait-and-switch approach I despise by suggesting […]

Apparently from what I’ve heard Water for Elephants is a much-beloved novel that I’m guessing Oprah recommended based on all the women in the theater the day I saw it. Obviously I never read the book but the movie was certainly quite entertaining. I went into it a bit skeptical as circus movies tend to […]

Okay, I got a little behind on some movie reviews so I need to get to these before they’re totally irrelevant. I’ll post them individually just in case I get side-tracked. I caught Jane Eyre. Here’s a classic work of literature that’s been told several times in various forms and I’ve managed to miss them […]

First I need to point out that I never read the book. Second, the theater I saw this at never mentioned it was Part I, of a trilogy no less. Lord of the Rings this isn’t. The film, from an incredibly dense novel from Ayn Rand, revolves around the trials and tribulations of a pair […]

This past week I finally caught up with Bradley Cooper‘s latest film, Limitless. The concept is one that’s been touched on before but not quite to this degree. Cooper’s character, Eddie Morra, is a rather typical, average guy, depressed and just sliding along in life. He’s a mess. He tells everyone he’s got a book […]

Rango is the very first animated film from the magicians at Industrial Light & Magic who’ve raised the technology bar in Hollywood so many times over the years that they’ve made it seem commonplace to do so. This first effort has first effort written all over it. The look is typical ILM. In other words […]

While on an industry event of my own I managed to find the time to check out Liam Neeson‘s newest film, Unknown. Neeson’s character is (ironically) on a trip with his wife as a guest speaker at an industry event in Berlin. After an accident he wakes up several days later in the hospital and, upon leaving, […]

A suburban South Korean grandmother grows fascinated with poetic prose in Poetry. The film comes with lots of adulation and pedigree. It was an official selection at several film festivals and the reviews were about as stellar as they get. In fact, as I write this it’s got a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. I’ve spoken […]