Yearly Archives: 2013

In Hollywood, they call it “on the nose” casting. And if ever you doubted that Matthew McConaugheywas the perfect pick to play the yarn-and-myth spinning rural romantic title character in Jeff Nichols’ Southern Gothic melodrama, “Mud,” he puts your mind at ease … Continue reading →

Never chatted with Michael “Transformers/Bad Boys” Bay before. He’s earned a lot of heat and abuse for this and that over the years — the “Transformers” movies, a couple of which were reasonably pleasant surprises. Slick editing, sort of a … Continue reading →

“Scary Movie 5” comes up short in every way imaginable. It’s only 80 minutes long. These “Scary Movie/Disaster Movie/Epic Movie/A Haunted House” pictures always manage to be the briefest encounters in theaters. Not that “brevity is the soul of wit,” … Continue reading →

Is it the violence, the torture, the nudity, that had Chinese authorities pull “Django Unchained” off their release slate Thursday, just as it was about to open (after being edited down by Tarantino)? Or was something more sinister at work? … Continue reading →

It’s Friday morning, which means time for my weekly chat with Mike Bianchi over at Open Mike on 740 The Game. We’ll talk “42,” the Jackie Robinson sports biography with Chadwick Boseman and Harrison Ford (as Dodgers GM BRanch Rickey). … Continue reading →

“The trades” both panned the Jackie Robinson bio-pic “42.” Not fans of the genre, by my read. Fine. Critics are, by definition, not the biggest sports biopic fans. Too many of us were the last kids picked for team dodgeball. … Continue reading →

The noise — limited to film buffs, admittedly — about the documentary “Room 237,” about Stanley Kubrick’s film of Steven King’s “The Shining” has gotten Warners interested in the idea of a new version of that story, a prequel. Deadline … Continue reading →

A coming of age dramedy set by the shore, an awkward teen (Liam James), his parents Carell and Toni Collette), the bad-good influence (Sam Rockwell) and the objectified object of desire — AnnaSophia Robb. “The Way Way Back” is packed … Continue reading →

If you want a child to be the face of the traffic in the worldwide sex slave trade, you could do worse than Persis Karen. An Indian girl with enormous, empathetic “anime eyes,” she plays Annika in the faith-based drama … Continue reading →