Possessed individuals and their exorcisms resurface every now and then in the horror genre. For many reasons, nothing tops The Exorcist for me. It was so expertly done — even for its time — that it tapped into the primal fear of evil and added simple special effects for a chilling experience that has not been matched […]
The poorest survivors of a global meltdown fight an oppressive class system aboard a perpetual-motion train in Snowpiercer. The year is 2031. With global warming growing worse 17 years ago, the people of Earth conceived a grand plan to restore the world’s climate. They sprayed the atmosphere with a chemical that, instead of solving the […]
A loud, crude, obnoxious woman heads on a road trip with her ballsy, whisky-loving grandmother in Tammy. Tammy (Melissa McCarthy) is a brash, overweight, overbearing, loser. Her demeanor costs her both her job and her husband in a single day. With nowhere else to turn, she heads to her mother’s house, but Mom (Allison Janney) has […]
A group of friends follow a strange series of messages, leading them to a cute, otherworldly being in search of a way back home in Earth to Echo. Three close-knit friends, struggling with the imminent end of their friendship thanks to a highway project that will level their neighborhood, find themselves captivated by one final […]
A burned-out music producer and forlorn songwriter work together on a new album, bringing them peace and passion in Begin Again. New York City is no stranger to countless untold rags-to-riches stories and nearly as many rags-to-riches-to-rags stories. Dan Mulligan (Mark Ruffalo) hopes to be one of the few that can turn the corner, adding a […]
A variation of a popular saying is “nothing exceeds like excess.” In the case of summer blockbusters, it almost seems like a game for directors to see how much they can cram into the running time to please the eyes and ears if not the mind as well. When I saw the trailer for Transformers: […]
An aimless, down-on-his-luck history professor goes on an unexpected journey with his estranged family in The Discoverers. Lewis Birch (Griffin Dunne) has seen better days. This once highly-regarded academic now finds himself working as a part-time professor at a small, unremarkable community college. His divorce, years ago, has left him distanced from his his droll […]
An eerily detached loner with a singularly obsessive focus chases after the men who ran off with his car in The Rover. In a dystopian Australia, after a devastating economic upheaval, everyone’s left to fend for themselves for their own daily survival. The collapse turns most of the sparse populace into desperate opportunists or outright bandits. Eric […]
Four young men leave the tough streets of Newark, New Jersey, to create a historic rock sensation in Jersey Boys. They were the biggest rock group in America before another fab four came over from England to rewrite rock history. In 1951, small-time hustler Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza) fills an opening in his local band with his golden-voiced […]
A straight-talking, unfiltered New York comedienne’s one-night stand brings an unanticipated focus to her life in Obvious Child. Donna Stern (Jenny Slate) is a take-charge kind of woman, albeit with often dubious effectiveness. Even though her Mom thinks she should be doing more with her 780 SAT score, she prefers the challenge of the local comedy […]
Buddy cop movies work best when there’s just as much humor or more as there is investigation into some crime. If you think back through the entries in some of the best franchises in this genre like Beverly Hills Cop, Rush Hour, Lethal Weapon and even The Heat, you also realize that one of the […]
An adolescent viking and his pet dragon encounter a disturbing clan that threatens the peace in How to Train Your Dragon 2. 2010’s animated film How to Train Your Dragon was one of my five best for the year. It introduced us to the story of young Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel), the awkward but inventive son […]