Side Effects is the latest (and possibly final) film from director Steven Soderbergh. This effort brought me through a potpourri of feelings. I found it curious, compelling, dull, thought-provoking, thrilling, tense, sexual, smart and satisfying—in that order. This is not a film for anyone who has major issues with prescribed drugs as it starts off very […]
Sylvester Stallone entertains the most these days when he’s poking fun at himself or the action film genre as in The Expendables or when he takes on a serious role as in Cop Land. Bullet to the Head leaves a lot to be desired as a mediocre action film that puts Stallone through the motions […]
Christopher Walken, Al Pacino and Alan Arkin come together to star in Stand Up Guys. The story about a trio of old-time hoods revolves mainly around Doc (Walken) and Val (Pacino). Val’s been doing time for an accidental killing for the last 28 years and it’s his old friend and literal partner-in-crime Doc who greets […]
Stand Up Guys has a lot going for it with its cast and premise, but in the end, it certainly doesn’t elicit a standing ovation. In fact, the only thing standing up in this film is Al Pacino’s pecker after a few too many male assistance pills. That tired sequence has been done to death […]
Every so often a movie will come along that captivates movie reviewers and the statements you read about it make you wonder if, perhaps, someone at my theater switched it out for some inferior test version. Looper is a perfect example of that. This time-travel film stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Joe (everyone in the film […]
The movie poster for Robot & Frank evokes a bit of wonder that grabbed my attention instantly. This was a film I needed to see. The multitude of positive reviews certainly didn’t diminish my interest either. Leonard Maltin called it, “one of the most enjoyable indie films of the year.“ It stars Frank Langella, most […]
In 1994 a 13 year-old boy from San Antonio, Texas goes missing without a trace. The family begins to move on from the tragedy when, more than three years later they get a call that police have found the child alive and, more or less, well in, of all places, Spain. The Imposter is a documentary […]
I had another good weekend for movie-going catching two. First up was Headhunters, a Norwegian film that caught me entirely by surprise. Roger Brown is a player of the highest order. He’s clearly one of Norway’s top vocational headhunters finding talent for only the largest and most successful companies. He has a stunningly beautiful live-in girlfriend […]
Last weekend I managed to catch Jack Black‘s latest film, Bernie. It’s the story of a locally-beloved mortician from Carthage, Texas named Bernie Tiede who befriends a local and very rich widow, Marjorie Nugent (played by Shirley MacLaine). Nugent is known throughout the town as a tyrant of the highest order and she’s despised by virtually […]
Partners in the the narcotics department head back to high school to catch drug dealers in a big screen farce of 21 Jump Street. One way I can tell that a film isn’t all that interesting is when I take the time to see it, take notes about it and then entirely forget to post a […]
This is one very quirky but oddly campy film experience.
There should be some sort of rule that movies with a cast like this have to be great. Sadly, there’s no such rule and no such luck. Tower Heist is a curious film with a few interesting moments, fewer laughs and a lot of misfires. Ben Stiller plays the lead and he’s terribly miscast here […]