“Jack Reacher” is based on Lee Child’s “One Shot,” the ninth mystery novel in a series of 17 that have cumulatively sold over 60 million copies worldwide, but you’d never guess this by only watching the film, which is exceedingly unexceptional. Paramount executives could have saved a lot of money on licensing fees by simply […]
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The title and advertised premise of Judd Apatow’s “This is 40” are diversion tactics. Yes, the focal couple turn 40 during the film and there are plenty of jokes about growing older—Debbie (Leslie Mann) pathologically lies about her age, while Pete (Paul Rudd) asks her to examine an irregularity he finds on his anus via
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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. Now that the holidays are over with, we’re back to movies being released on the standard Friday, so extrapolating predictions from existing comparisons is easier. There are only two new wide releases this weekend, so
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Quentin Tarantino would make an interesting case study for those interested in what and where Americans learn about history. Tarantino’s new film, “Django Unchained,” which takes place in the pre-Civil War South, is about slavery in the same way that his “Inglourious Basterds” was about the Holocaust, which is to say, it isn’t. This film’s
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The product of two negative integers is a positive one, but the product of two cliché film premises is not an original one, as proven by “The Guilt Trip,” a relentlessly uninspired pairing of the road-trip movie and the mother-son bonding movie. When even the smartly cast Barbra Streisand and Seth Rogen–the quintessential Jewish mom
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West Hollywood, 1979. One night in a gay bar, Paul (Garret Dillahunt), who has barely come to terms with his homosexuality after the collapse of his heterosexual marriage, locks eyes with drag performer Rudy (Alan Cumming). They have a sexual encounter in the parking lot and Paul gives Rudy his phone number. The next morning,
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When designing high school history textbooks, publishers often incorporate small, colorful boxes filled with “Did you know?”-style trivia about the people and places relevant to the material at hand, so that the otherwise monotonous, dense reading doesn’t become overly tedious for the student. The new FDR film “Hyde Park on the Hudson” feels like the
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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 several weeks in a row of only one or two new wide releases, moviegoers have a bevy of fresh choices to pick from this time — five, to be exact. That makes my load
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With “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” Peter Jackson triumphantly returns to the franchise that made him one of Hollywood’s most powerful directors. The strengths and weaknesses are largely the same as those of his “Lord of the Rings” films, though “The Hobbit” differs in that it features a simpler, smaller story. This shift in scope
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“Doomsday Book” is an anthology film comprised of three shorts from two preeminent Korean directors, one of whom Western audiences are familiar with (Ji-woon Kim, who made the cult favorites “The Good, The Bad and the Weird” and “I Saw the Devil”) and another who they’ll now want to know more about (Pil-Sung Yim). Yim’s
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