Derek Cianfrance’s sprawling, epic “The Place Beyond the Pines” is Capital-A Ambitious filmmaking of proportions we haven’t encountered in a project with Hollywood stars since “The Tree of Life” a few years back. Well, perhaps that’s an overstatement—Cianfrance’s focus is smaller than Terrence Malick’s, which amounted to no less than the breadth of Creation—but still, […]
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There is no doubt that DreamWorks has established itself as a film-brand nearly as recognizable as Pixar, but the value of such is debatable, given that the brand is essentially “The Big Animation Studio That Isn’t As Good as Pixar.” That’s not to say that the animators at DreamWorks don’t execute a good idea well
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“G.I. Joe: Retaliation” has nary a single moment in its 110 minute runtime that doesn’t qualify as idiotic in some capacity. It’s yet another mega-budget film that serves as an assault on logic and realism, with each scene seemingly trying to top the previous one in terms of how ridiculous it can get. This process
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While Tyler Perry’s five previous “serious” movies (that is to say, those that do not star Madea) contained no shortage of melodramatic plot developments—each boasts an amount comparable to that of an entire season of the average soap opera—“Temptation” marks the filmmaker’s first attempt at an all-encompassing, big twist. He fails miserably. Any viewer with
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The first sequence of Harmony Korine’s devilishly good new film “Spring Breakers”—comprised of intimate views of scantily clad, young female body-parts on a Florida beach, most of them gyrating—perfectly encapsulates the film’s modus operandi. This type of establishing shot has become commonplace in T&A-focused cinema, like the latest “Porky’s” knockoff (whatever that was) — to
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Antoine Fuqua’s “Olympus Has Fallen” might be the most patriotic movie ever that makes Americans look blazingly incompetent. Here we have a plot that sees a band of North Koreans launch a blistering attack on the White House by sea and air, one that kills hundreds and results in the capture of the president (Aaron
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Hello and welcome back to Box Office Beat, the column in which I predict the upcoming weekend’s box office results. After a slow start, it looks like we’re finally in a financially successful part of the year for Hollywood, with the recent big openings of “Oz the Great and Powerful,” “The Croods,” and the surprise
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“Starbuck” has a comic premise that Kevin Smith might envy: After years of donating sperm, a truck driver discovers that he has sired more than 500 kids—and now 142 of them want to know the identity of their prolific dad. At first glance, this French-Canadian production fits cozily into the present American trend of building
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“The Silence” is built around a novel idea: to depict the effect of a murder (two, actually) on everyone immediately impacted by the crime. We spend what seems like equal time with the murderer, his accomplice, the investigators, and the parents of the victims. The film is told with a surprising amount of empathy for
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Hello and welcome back to Box Office Beat, the column in which I predict the upcoming weekend’s box office grosses. Four new wide releases hit the multiplex tomorrow, the 24th birthday of yours truly, so let’s not dilly-dally. It’s time to crunch some numbers. Undoubtedly the highest-profile opener is DreamWorks Animation’s “The Croods,” which is
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