Daily Archives: January 2, 2013

Eddie Murphy finds inner piece — but precious few laughs in “A Thousand Words,” an ambitious new comedy from a guy whose ambition abandoned him sometime in the ’90s.

“The Odd Life of Timothy Green” is an achingly sweet parent-and-child tearjerker that’s every bit as precious as its title. But it’s an oddly emotion-free fantasy, a film that strains to find the magic, joy and heartbreak in a story … Continue reading →

“The Adventures of Tintin” is the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” sequel Steven Spielberg might have made if he hadn’t felt the need to keep Shia LaBeouf on the payroll. A rollicking, breezy motion-capture animated romp, Spielberg & Co. have … Continue reading →

“You can be blasé about some things, Rose,” Cal Hockley (Billy Zane) pretentiously sniffs in this famous movie you may have heard about. “But not about Titanic!’” And so it with the movie about that famous ship. Love it or … Continue reading →

What’s the old saying, “3D fool me once, shame on you, 3D fool me twice, shame on me?” “Clash of the Titans” was a nearly humorless, overly digitized remake of a piece of sword and sorcery cheese from the 1980s, … Continue reading →

The almost non-stop chase of the new “Total Recall” isn’t enough, by itself, to make one forget the earlier take on this Philip K. Dick story back in the last century. And for all the effects, the action and the … Continue reading →

“Trouble With the Curve” is a baseball dramedy that telegraphs its pitches, an amiable, meandering character study whose big plot points hang there like the curve balls of its title. We see them coming a long time before they get … Continue reading →

“Jeff, Who Lives at Home” could be just another quirky, abrasive and unconventional relations comedy from the Duplass Brothers, the fellows who gave us The Puffy Chair” and last year’s “Cyrus.” It starts with the assertion — by Jeff (Jason … Continue reading →

In nature, lightning occasionally strikes the same place twice. In the movies, it almost never happens. So as good as Liam Neeson was in “Taken,” as good as he often is in “Taken 2,” the sequel — about the family … Continue reading →

“Jack and Diane” is a dour and downbeat young-lesbians-in-love romance that spares us those usual motion picture viewing experiences — the occasional high and low. It’s flat, with the inexpressive Jack (Riley Keogh of “Magic Mike”) putting the unromantic and … Continue reading →