This past week I saw two films that were both noteworthy. The first film is Please Give. It stars Catherine Keener as Kate and Oliver Platt as her husband Alex. Kate and Alex are moderately successful furniture store owners that procure their inventory by more or less stalking the estates of occupants who are either […]

This week I was a bit nonplussed to see Robin Hood. The reviews were lukewarm and it just all seemed to be getting very little buzz. Thankfully the movie deserves a better fate than that. The first thing to know is that the previews are entirely misleading. If you’re expecting a re-telling of the classic 1938 Errol […]

Last week I caught Iron Man 2 and it was so good that I couldn’t find the words to describe my feelings. Actually, it was just so boring that I couldn’t bring myself to bother. I loved the first Iron Man. I liked it so much that I had a hard time keeping it out […]

This weekend I found myself with friends who wanted to see the new art house documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty. The film tells the story of the fall rise and—we’re not sure—of Disney‘s animation department during the 80’s and 90’s. The film picks up just as Walt Disney‘s son-in-law is about to be shown the door […]

A couple desperate for a carefree night on the town get far more than they bargained for in Date Night. It seemed inevitable that Steve Carrell and Tina Fey would end up together in a fairly straight-forward rom-com.  The powerhouse comedy duo play typical suburbanite parents caught up in the monotony of everyday life. They love one another, but both […]

I had another venture out to Las Vegas this week for an industry convention and I’ve been there so many times that most of its defacto charms no longer have any impact on me. One thing that has changed over the years is that now there are many major movie theaters. Back when I first […]

A young viking befriends an injured dragon to the dismay of most of his village in How to Train Your Dragon. Animated films are often a challenge for many adults — especially those without children. Some are clearly meant for a younger audience, while others offer a much wider appeal. When I saw the previews for this […]

This past weekend I saw the latest Ben Stiller movie; Greenberg. It’s a Noah Baumbach film which is a key point as Baumbach-written movies are a love-them/hate-them sort of affair. The story apparently came from wife Jennifer Jason Leigh who also has a role in the film (and who wears the most unattractive glasses I’ve […]

This past week I got around to seeing Tim Burton‘s incarnation of Alice in Wonderland. As a child I’d read the stories and found them a bit lacking. Maybe it was the female heroine. Maybe it was the goofy characters but I mainly felt they just weren’t very interesting stories. More to the point I […]

My best friend suggested we see something other than the big movie of the week and so we headed off to see The Ghost Writer. The reviews were all pretty glowing and it sounded like a curiously delicious film. The Ghost Writer stars Ewan McGregor as a successful (but unknown) ghost writer who’s given a […]

I’ve had mixed feelings about Martin Scorsese‘s films. Most recently we were offered The Departed and while much of it was clearly brilliant the plot had holes big enough to fly an airship through them. Seeing previews of Shutter Island made me think quite a bit about his past efforts and how many of them […]

As the blizzard of 2010 approached us I decided to go check out the new movie Frozen. It’s a lower-budget independent film that reminded me at once of Open Water—a no-frills movie shot almost entirely in a single oddly claustrophobic set with people you’ve never seen before. Let me say that I’ve enjoyed similar films […]