Category Archives: previews

Time travel meets “found footage” in “Project Almanac,” a “Blair Witch/Chronicle” tale about pretty teens tampering with all things temporal. A couple of ingenious wrinkles distinguish this “Back to the Future” from “Looper” and its other cousins. It’s not as … Continue reading →

Universal’s “The Boy Next Door” is almost so bad it’s good. Well, at least they got the “bad” part of that equation right. A risible stalker thriller predicated on the absurd notion that Jennifer Lopez is still a movie star, … Continue reading →

Three downed Navy airmen stuck on a raft in the middle of the Pacific in World War II for weeks on end. It’s a familiar movie narrative, at least in part, because it happened more than once, even happened to … Continue reading →

A comedy that barely flirts with funny and a grim weeper that never quite raises a tear, “Cake” has one thing going for it — Jennifer Aniston. And if she didn’t get the Oscar nomination that might have seemed certain … Continue reading →

His hair is thinning and his features are thickening, and Jude Law is evolving into a more interesting actor as this happens. He’s more at home in tough guy roles such as “Dom Hemingway.” The gritty submarine thriller “Black Sea” … Continue reading →

You’ve never seen Ewan McGregor quite like this — all sadistic, ruthless and what not. In “Son of a Gun,” he plays Brendan, an escaped convict who busts out of the joint, does a job and is double-crossed. And Brendan … Continue reading →

It’s common Hollywood practice to follow an Oscar win with a trip to big budget land, where the paychecks, the trailers and and the impact on the culture are potentially huge. So Sandra Bullock did “Gravity” right after “Blind Side,” … Continue reading →

Every NRA member must have gone. And a lot of conservative media outlets and websites have been all over Clint EAstwood’s somewhat controversial film (apparently a whitewashing of the real shooter), and the endorsements put meat in the seats, as … Continue reading →

“Spare Parts” is a pleasant enough run-of-the-mill outsiders-beat-the-odds dramedy in the “Race the Sun” mold. It’s about undocumented high school kids who enter a big robot-building competition, and make a splash in that state most hostile to illegal immigration — … Continue reading →

Jake Gyllenhaal could have made that best actor field, and that’s a performance that merited inclusion. I don’t disagree with Bradley Cooper’s nomination for best actor for “American Sniper.” The movie’s controversy aside, he gives a real performance in it … Continue reading →