Monthly Archives: October 2014

Shailene Woodley, a young actress so engagingly real on camera that she can do no wrong, gets a lot wrong and a bad film out of her system with “White Bird in a Blizzard,” an overwrought coming-of-age mystery drama that … Continue reading →

Here’s an odd and interesting choice of roles for the onetime Harry Potter. Daniel Radcliffe plays a young man who grows a pair of horns as a consequence of being accused of killing his girlfriend (Juno Temple). Comical Biblical good-evil … Continue reading →

Monday, reviews were trending toward the ecstatic for “Fury”, the latest Brad Pitt WWII picture, and negative on “The Book of Life.” But that balanced out, as it needed to. “Fury” is a B-movie, with a lulu of an odds … Continue reading →

For an hour or so, Michelle Monaghan and James Marsden gamely swim against the current, fighting the torpid tide of tripe that romance novelist Nicholas Sparks sends their way in his latest. It’s sad to watch them strain and struggle … Continue reading →

This bit of heroics isn’t “what I wanted to do,” Brad Pitt’s battle-scarred sergeant, and a hundred movie sergeants before him, growl. “But it’s what we’re doing.” “Fury” is the sort of World War II movie Hollywood used to churn … Continue reading →

“The Book of Life” is a Mexican-accented kids’ cartoon so colorful and unconventionally dazzling it almost reinvents the art form. As pretty as a just-punctured pinata, endlessly inventive, warm and traditional, it serves up Mexican culture in a riot of … Continue reading →

“Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance” is the last caped superhero movie you will ever need to see. Serious and silly, self-aware and ironic, it’s the movie that questions stardom, fame and celebrity, built around a role Michael Keaton … Continue reading →

“Satire is the weapon of reason” is the punch line to writer-director Justin Simien’s flip and hip satire, “Dear White People.” Here’s a race-based/race-baiting comedy that tackles issues of identity and sensitivity head on, a debut film that brashly borrows … Continue reading →

Acting, Michael Keaton has long maintained, “is an act of pulling your pants down.” And for the film that one-and-all have labeled his “comeback,” “that’s literally true.” For “Birdman,” the one-time Batman plays a has-been actor, bitter and a little … Continue reading →