Among other unfortunate things, “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” must be the crummiest-looking big-budget movie of the year to date. The picture has the flat lighting of a TV soap opera, and its effects–brazenly fakey landscapes under highly unlikely skies–might have
Among several things that commend it–not least the baroque design and slick visuals you’d expect of any back-to-the-future mission mounted by Ridley Scott–the new “Prometheus” contains the most electrifying body-horror shock scene in recent memory. It’s part of a harrowing
What is Charlize Theron doing in this movie–such a fine actress, reduced to shopworn rants and glowers? Or the warmly charismatic Chris Hemsworth (fresh from “The Avengers”)? And how to explain the presence of Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone,
“Men in Black III” reenlists the talents of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, of course–Smith with his urban sizzle, Jones with his craggy codger sorrow–and it’s good to have them back, togged out in their black suits and shades
Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom,” which opened the Cannes Film Festival last week, is a movie whose pleasures are largely formal. Anderson acolytes will welcome another demonstration of his deadpan visual strategies–the locked-down shots facing off on split screens, the camera
I always had reservations about Sacha Baron Cohen’s sucker-punching humor. “Borat” was hilarious, unless you happened to be one of the trusting Romanians who were mocked as ignorant peasants in the picture. “Brüno,” the less-successful followup, also had some funny
Being a Tim Burton movie, the new “Dark Shadows” is an exercise in the sort of gothic fantabula with which the director’s fans are familiar–perhaps, by now, overly so. It is also the eighth Burton film to star Johnny Depp.
More than anything else, “The Avengers” is a triumph for Joss Whedon, who wrote the script and directed the movie and is now, after years of smaller-scale wizardry in the fantasy genre, firmly installed in the top echelon of the
“Headhunters” is a nasty little crime thriller from Norway that keeps twisting you into a state of tense uncertainty right up to the end. The movie is admirably faithful to the unsavory Jo Nesbø novel on which it’s based–a book
“The Raven” is a movie that adds up to little more than the pitch meeting that spawned it: Edgar Allan Poe, celebrated master of the macabre, does battle with a serial killer in an atmosphere of “Se7en”-like depravity. This isn’t
Mary Harron’s “The Moth Diaries” is like the “Twilight” films without the glitter, and without the silly brooding vampire boys. Great. The story is set in a girls’ boarding school, and there’s a heavy air of Sapphic attraction–which, alas, might
“Darling Companion” is a movie that Woody Allen might have made if he had (a) no gift for narrative charm, (b) no knack for tangy banter, and (c) no sense of humor. The cast features a couple of actors who
When two guys, two girls, and a nerd set out to party in a creepy cabin deep in the woods, you know in your weary bones what’s going to happen. The only question, at this late date in the history
The funniest thing about “Lockout,” a film that is not without several amusements of a subsidiary nature, is the notion that it is based on an “original idea” sprung from the brow of the alarmingly prolific French writer-director-producer Luc Besson.
If a movie is going to brood, there are probably few better places to do it than the misty forests and mountains of Tasmania. And what better actor to do the brooding than Willem Dafoe, whose chiseled features are by
“ATM” is a bare-bones horror film that feels a little long even at 90 minutes, thus giving us more time than it should to savor the story’s basic silliness. The movie isn’t quite as claustrophobic as the 2010 “Buried,” also the
“Wrath of the Titans” stands tall in the pantheon of schlock–it’s schlock with brio, the best kind. And if I were a contemporary lad with no memory of Ray Harryhousen’s stop-motion Sinbads and Argonauts of 50 years ago, I think
The new documentary “Bully” takes you straight back to school days–and they’re still every bit as awful as you might remember. Here once again are the cool kids, the pretty people, the jocks; and over there, the loners and the
Anyone who has read the 2008 bestseller on which it’s based will encounter no surprises in “The Hunger Games.” Once again we’re in the post-apocalyptic country of Panem–formerly North America before an unspecified disaster wiped out that civilization some years
Jeff (Jason Segel) is a man in search of signs. Unmoored by the death of his father 15 years ago, he’s now 30 years old, unemployed, and still living at home with his mom, Sharon (Susan Sarandon). Jeff is waiting
The new Nicolas Cage movie–wait, don’t bolt!–is kind of fun, actually. It’s a cartoon vigilante film with a nice line in gaudy villains, and while it doesn’t make, shall we say, complete sense, it’s worth a look. Maybe a Netflix kind of
The most awesome of the many special effects on view in the new “John Carter” is pyrotechnic in nature: How often do you get to watch $250-million (the movie’s reported budget) go straight up in flames? Making his first live-action
“Bullhead” is a grim Belgian movie about the illicit trade in agricultural growth hormones. Subtitled, of course. What’s not to like, right? And yet the film is very much worth seeing for the great, smoldering performance of its star, Matthias
What you make of the new comedy “Wanderlust” may depend on where you stand in the 50-year-long hippies-versus-straights continuum. Those who were around for the 1960s will already be familiar with fun-loving flower children, in their trademark pot-and-patchouli haze, gently
English author Mary Norton’s 1952 fantasy novel “The Borrowers” has been adapted a number of times over the years, mainly for TV. But it’s hard to imagine any previous version of the tale being more lustrously fashioned than “The Secret
There are several things one might say about “Thin Ice”; unfortunately, some of them must remain unsaid. Set in the wintry Midwest, the movie is a dark, twisty crime thriller that recalls the Coen brothers’ snowbound “Fargo” and John Dahl’s
“In Darkness,” Poland’s submission for this year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, is a movie that drives home the abomination of the Holocaust in a freshly chilling way. The story, based on true events as recalled by survivors in a 1991
Name this movie: An ace CIA operative, condemned as a rogue and now hunted by the Company, bashes and crashes his way through colorful foreign settings, pursued by heavily armed hit men, while back at Langley headquarters an inscrutable deputy
With “Chronicle,” the shaky-cam “real footage” movie, on the cusp of propelling some viewers into face-clawing lamentation, finally grows up. The picture has a rousing spirit and an unexpected emotional warmth. It features good (if little-known) actors, a solid genre
One positive thing to be said about Madonna’s new movie, “W.E.,” is that it is leagues better than her first directing effort, the 2008 “Filth and Wisdom.” But then many things are, periodontal surgery among them. Unlike that earlier film,
What will it take to finally bring humankind together, to unite us all in respect and appreciation and a sense of shared purpose? How about a pack of vicious wolves intent on tearing us to bloody shreds? Judging by “The
Few filmmakers have been more alert to the possibilities of working with non-professional actors than Steven Soderbergh. His 2005 “Bubble” was an exercise in trailer-park vérité, and the 2009 “Girlfriend Experience” provided a crossover showcase for porn star Sasha Grey.
It’s good to see a return of old-school hype and hustle to the crappy-movie business. William Castle would certainly be pleased. The late producer was a master of this sort of thing, amping up the crowds at his cheapo horror
Writer-director Ti West is a low-budget auteur celebrated within the horror-boy fraternity as the future of their beloved form. West is devoted to the genre’s pre-torture-porn past–to the slow buildup of tension rather than promiscuous slashes of gore. Unfortunately, in
Blue Öyster Cult, as some might not recall, was a big band a long time ago, and is still ghosting the classic-rock airwaves with its 1976 hit, “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.” The group soldiers on, in some vague form, but