Monthly Archives: November 2015

So “The Hunger Games” make their exit with a wildly overrated 72% on the Rottentomatoes tomatometer.Rottentomatoes tomatometer.  Even the more reliable Metacritic reflects this bias, tho not to the same extent. tho not to the same extent. Godawfully dull film, … Continue reading →

“Spotlight” is the best movie about journalism since “All the President’s Men.” Director Tom McCarthy and a cast of master underplayers deliver the tale of the Watergate of our times. It’s a newspaper picture, a great one, about the shoe … Continue reading →

Benedict Cumberbatch. Penelope Cruz, Wiig, Ferrell.An 80s Alfa Romeo Spider. And Ben and Owen, together again. Yeah, it had a hint of desperation when it was announced. But “Zoolander 2,” aka “2oolander,” looks self-absorbed and amusing, a comedy for the … Continue reading →

Of all the emotions actors are called upon to deliver when the director calls “Action,” the first paroxysms of grief must be the hardest. But Julia Roberts makes us feel that she has just this instant discovered that the body … Continue reading →

It’s not a mistake to call Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne’s appearance as “The Danish Girl” a stunt. Playing the first man ever to undergo a sex change operation was always going to have a “can he look like a real … Continue reading →

Well, thank heavens that’s over with. “The Hunger Games” go out with two hours and seventeen minutes in which every performance, every bored expression of sentiment, every limp action-beat suggests that phrase was the on-set mantra. Over and done. Where’s … Continue reading →

The raunchy, dopey holiday farce “The Night Before” hits you “like a wrecking a ball,” to steal a lyric from one of its better cameos. A “Pineapple Express” flavored romp through substance abuse and the sacrireligous, it hoots off the … Continue reading →

“What’s that sound?” Angelina Jolie Pitt’s character says to Brad Pitt’s character in “By the Sea.” “The sea,” he says, leaving out the “duh.” They unpack  his typewriter in their posh boutique hotel in the south of late 1960s France … Continue reading →

You don’t have to be a Notre Dame football fan to fall for “Rudy,” and you didn’t have to have Indiana hoop dreams to get all sentimental over “Hoosiers.” But Angelo Pizzo, the guy who scripted those films and who … Continue reading →

“Miss You Already” may be the funniest, sunniest weeper in history. That, in spite of the fact that this runs counter to the goals of the genre, and in spite of the fact that it’s set in rarely-sunny Britain. It’s … Continue reading →