Monthly Archives: September 2014

This month’s “young adults save the future” film franchise is “The Maze Runner,” an indifferent quest tale about boys trapped in a gigantic maze with no idea how they got there. A teen boy (Dylan O’Brien) wakes up, screaming, on … Continue reading →

With its latest thriller, Universal arrives a day late and a few dollars short in the Liam “Particular Skills” Neeson revenge sweepstakes. “A Walk Among the Tombstones” has the veneer of high mindedness that the “Taken” movies lack. But it … Continue reading →

She’s one of the loveliest ladies ladies working in the movies. But Michelle Monaghan has a thing about dressing down and playing working class. Think of her in “Gone, Baby Gone,” or “Trucker.” And in “Fort Bliss,” she really delivers, … Continue reading →

Rumors of Kevin “Clerks” Smith’s retirement from the silver screen to spend his dotage doing podcasts for his aging fanboy fanbase were alas, grossly overstated. He has used that podcast to generate a tall tale, a serio-comic Canadian-joke of a … Continue reading →

“The Zero Theorem” is director Terry Gilliam’s latest dazzling dose of sci-fi eye candy, and the third film in what some are calling his “Brazil” trilogy. Like “Brazil” and “Twelve Monkeys,” it’s about human connections in a technologically warped world … Continue reading →

“Love is Strange” is a sweet, random little nothing that pairs up John Lithgow and Alfred Molina as a longtime couple whose lives change, for the worse, when they finally get married once gay marriage is legal in New York. … Continue reading →

You don’t realize just how much information a film can get across visually until you stumble across one that has virtually no dialogue, nothing but images — archetypal characters and situations — to tell its story. “Autumn Blood” is such … Continue reading →

“This is Where I Leave You” is a big, broad dysfunctional family comedy, sort of a “Parenthood” pushed into R-rated “Adulthood” territory. Jonathan Tropper has turned his novel into a script that becomes the quintessential Shawn “Date Night”/”The Internship” Levy … Continue reading →

In sports and other walks of life, they call it your “game face,” that serious expression that shows you’re serious, focused on the game or job at hand. Soldiers might call it “mission face.” It’s what Maggie Swann, an Army … Continue reading →

“At my age,” Jane Fonda says, “it gets hard to find a role that’s fun and sexy and a little bit outrageous.” Which is exactly what she found in “This is Where I Leave You.” Playing the shares-too-much matriarch of … Continue reading →