Monthly Archives: December 2014

Clever title, taking us back to James Bond’s arch nemesis, the extra-governmental crime syndicate that kept Sean Connery and Roger Moore so busy all those years. Clever, too, in reviving  “Spectre” in an age of Al Quaeda and ISIS. Ernst … Continue reading →

Ethan Hawke found his groove as an actor sometime, I figure, in the late 90s. His indie film connection to Richard Linklater led to the “Before Sunrise” trilogy with Julie Delpy, and eventually to “Boyhood,” Linklater’s masterpiece, the movie that … Continue reading →

You missed one of the best movies of the year? Top 20, if not Top Ten list material? You weren’t alone. It opened meekly, dropped off screens too quickly, and that’s a crime. No worries. Hollywood’s dead post-“Hunger Games” stretch … Continue reading →

Reese Witherspoon finds a role worthy of her in “Wild,” playing a woman who hikes her way out of a tragic past, one painful, traumatic step at a time. A find-yourself-by-testing-yourself drama in the “Into the Wild” or “The Way” … Continue reading →

Sasha and Paige are more than best-friends. They connect, they finish each other’s sentences. They’re “Life Partners.” And as such, they have rituals — date night consists of drinking, watching “Top Model” together and mocking it, and spying each other … Continue reading →

“Take Care” is an undemanding romantic comedy about love and responsibility and how doing right by someone always has consequences, not all of them good. It’s a star vehicle for Leslie Bibb, a perky supporting player in films such as … Continue reading →

Stories about the modern world’s origins within the Dark Ages have always held a fascination for some — OK, maybe it’s just me. It’s not exactly filmdom’s favorite era, all brown and muddy and unhygienic. A priest on the run … Continue reading →

A marriage, a Broadway debut, a couple of steps up the ladder in her movie career and a well-received pop album — it’s been “a pretty good year,” for Leighton Meester, admits Leighton Meester. The onetime “Gossip Girl” regular married … Continue reading →

“A Field Full of Secrets” is, its filmmaker Charles Maxwell admits, something of a fool’s errand. He set out to find a definitive answer to the “mystery” of crop circles, those strange, geometric and artistic grain-mashing designs that have been … Continue reading →