Daily Archives: December 31, 2012

  Whatever you think of Tom Cruise, you know he’s not 6’5” and well over 200 pounds, which is the way author Lee Child describes his crime-solving/justice dispensing ex-military policeman, Jack Reacher. But even if Cruise isn’t as physically imposing … Continue reading →

Director Michael Winterbottom finds fresh pathos in that classic melodrama of a beautiful poor woman “ruined” by a rich rake with “Trishna,” an updating of “Tess of the D’urbervilles.” Winterbottom moves the story to modern day India, and makes it … Continue reading →

“Queen of Versailles” is a documentary that plays like a pilot for a reality TV series. You think the Karadashians are trashy, that “Jon & Kate Plus Eight” was a high-carbon-footprint divorce waiting to happen? Wait’ll you see see the … Continue reading →

“The Big Year” is a comedy about competitive bird-watching. It stars three of the biggest stars from two generations of screen comedy — Steve Martin, Owen Wilson and Jack Black. So there’s little time for waxing poetic about our feathered … Continue reading →

Maybe it went down something like this. The day begins with the march of the downsizers — those “consultants” hired by big businesses to come in and do the dirty work of laying people off. Maybe one of the guys … Continue reading →

scuss This: Comments(2) | Add to del.icio.us | Digg it The bottom line on any horror picture is clear cut and simple. How many times does it raise the hair on the back of your neck? How often do you … Continue reading →

I’m gathering up the emails from studio publicists, one and all. Going over the 2013 release slate, compiling the list. There’s a pretty thorough one at Comingsoon.net, an epic undertaking. Heaven knows how many woman/man hours it takes to compile … Continue reading →

Bullets, bullwhips and beatings produce slo-mo geysers of blood.  Pistoleros launch into soliloquies on slavery and the German Siegfried myth. “Django Unchained” is set in Quentin Taratino’s pre-Civil War South. Another indulgent movie from the cinema’s reigning junk genre junky, … Continue reading →

For those who simply cannot get enough of Middle Earth, Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit” promises to be the ultimate Travel New Zealand mini-series. He and his “Lord of the Rings” team have taken J.R.R. Tolkien’s dense but slight and more … Continue reading →