Monthly Archives: September 2014

“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 →

“No Good Deed” earned poor reviews and lacked the novelty of Beyonce co-starring, which had explained Idris Elba’s hit “Obsessed” a few years ago. But Idris and Tariji P. Henson and a lot of awful, graphic violence-against-women footage sold this … Continue reading →

Terry Gilliam’s track record as a director is very much a mixed bag, in terms of box office or critical success. But the director of “Brazil” and 12 Monkeys” and “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” is often compared to the … Continue reading →

The biggest box office news is that “Guardians of the Galaxy” finally cleared $300 million, a week after the summer ended. It is the biggest US hit of the year, now. Not that it won this weekend. Oh no, the … Continue reading →

Screen Gems celebrates Violence Against Women Awareness Week with “No Good Deed,” a brutal thriller about, you guessed it, a “malignant narcissist” committing all sorts of violence against women. The team behind “Obsessed” serves up Idris Elba as an escaped … Continue reading →

There have been earlier and better movies about “The Memphis Sound,” with the documentary “Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story” being among the best. And there have been recent and better music documentaries built around the idea of giving music … Continue reading →

You might have thought “Dolphin Tale,” the sleeper hit kids’ film of a few falls back, was a complete, compact and uplifting story that didn’t really need a second act. And if so, you were on the money. A fictionalized … Continue reading →

It’s the phone call no one wants to answer. A relative has been hospitalized. He tried to kill himself.Most inconveniently, when Maggie answers the phone she has to discard the fatal fistful of pills she was about to pop. She … Continue reading →