Monthly Archives: June 2014

Saturday is always the big cash-in day for a kids’ cartoon. So don’t be shocked if the middling “How to Train Your Dragon 2,” which enjoys much weaker reviews on the simple yes–or-no rating the Rottentomatoes meter measures (go to … Continue reading →

Reviews for both of this weekend’s wide releases have been overwhelmingly positive, though skipping past the deceptive Tomatometer to the more measured Metacritic scale shows support for “How to Train Your Dragon 2” is a bit soft. As in everybody … Continue reading →

The big releases from major studios this week are getting enthusiastic endorsements — or at least some love, from most critics. The riotous “22 Jump Street” is the sequel to end all sequels. It mocks the idea of making a … Continue reading →

The charms of “How to Train Your Dragon” are thinned a bit for its sequel, a cartoon with better animation and livelier action, if fewer jokes. If there’s one thing these sweet-message/great flying sequence movies don’t need is fewer jokes. … Continue reading →

Science fiction cinema doesn’t get much more beautifully strange than “The Signal.” An alien-interaction thriller that borrows from generations of such films that preceded it, it has the visual tone, production design and especially sound design to rival the best … Continue reading →

They should’ve killed him when they had the chance. Twas ever thus in revenge thrillers. The “hero” is wronged, injured, left for dead. Only he isn’t. And since he’s Guy “Memento” Pearce, we reckon there’ll be heck to pay. “The … Continue reading →

　You’re pretty much going to have to see “22 Jump Street” twice — just to catch all the jokes the roars of laughter make you miss.No kidding, when this buddy cop parody hits its sweet spots — bromance gags carried … Continue reading →

“The Human Race” is one of those “don’t get too attached to anybody” horror pictures, a lower-than-low budget variation of every race/chase/pick’em off, one-by-one horror tale since Edgar Allan Poe invented the genre and Agatha Christie perfected it. But for … Continue reading →

“Unsustainable” has become our watchword for a bubble about to burst, a system — financial, climatological or health care — on the brink of collapse.The experts in “Ivory Tower” use it, with varying degrees of alarm, to describe the state … Continue reading →