Rudy, a gay female impersonator (played by Alan Cumming) has his life turned 180 degrees unexpectedly when he ventures into his neighbor’s abandoned apartment to turn down the endlessly playing (and loud) radio only to find her Down Syndrome-suffering child Marco sitting there left all alone. This story, supposedly based on true events (though I […]

There was something in the previews of Life of Pi that kept me from rushing to see it. To be honest, it looked a bit too fantastical for my tastes. I saw it last night and now lament every single day of having not experienced this wondrous story. The film is about Pi Patel—now older—telling […]

I feel cheated. The previews for Anna Karenina did absolutely nothing to prepare me for the unique approach of this telling of the famous Leo Tolstoy story—and I suspect this was very much on purpose. Many people are probably familiar with the tale as there have been decades of books movies, plays and more. However, […]

Chasing Ice is a film that documents the disappearance of glaciers from key areas around the globe in a way intended to provide real context. Researcher James Balog built a team dubbed Extreme Ice Survey. The team installed cutting-edge time-lapse cameras in Iceland, Greenland, Alaska and Montana. Understand that installation of this equipment is no small task. The […]

A young princess is married-off to a mentally disturbed young king and seeks solace in the arms of her physician in A Royal Affair. I have to admit that I don’t really know much of anything about the broader history of Denmark. In the United States that pretty much means I’m like nearly everyone else. […]

A President struggles with the political and social complexities of freeing an entire race from the shackles of slavery in Lincoln. I never seem to lose the excitement of seeing whatever the latest effort is from uber-director Steven Spielberg. Last year that excitement wasn’t very long-lived, but this year Spielberg has tackled a subject I thought […]

This new documentary on the history, status and impact of the drug war in America will leave you in a state of anger. The House I Live In is presented in a way that leaves very little doubt that the entire effort and all the countless dollars that have gone into this “war” were not […]

We’re now celebrating 50 years of James Bond films and the latest installment is Skyfall. This entirely new story (that is one not written by Bond creator Ian Fleming) is the second such endeavor with the first effort being the extremely lackluster Quantum of Solace. This iteration came with a litany of glowing reviews but […]

The Sessions is an unlikely tale that combines several aspects that seem completely incompatible and yet weaves it all together to form a beautiful, wonderfully meshed story. This is an autobiographical look at a portion of journalist and poet Mark O’Brien‘s life. One day O’Brien sets a goal to lose his virginity. However, there’s a […]

Denzel Washington stars in a new film as a heroic but troubled airline captain in Flight. This is a film that manages to effectively blend a first-rate thriller and a compelling drama into one fluid story line that will have most viewers glued to the edge of their seats throughout. The film really takes place […]

Quite fun for gaming fans.

Cloud Atlas is a tale of six different time periods and people that connect each period together—or at least I think that’s the idea. This is an epic film with an epic tale and an epic cast that epically failed to interest me for more than a few minutes of its nearly-epic three hour running […]