I am loath to confess this, but I really did not like this movie. On the one hand, the time seemed to fly by in that I was waiting for the actual story to begin and then what? 40 minutes already? On the other hand, I found everything so melodramatic and capricious that [...]

Writer/director Robert Siegel previously made a dramatic splash with his wonderful screenplay for The Wrestler. With Big Fan, Siegel shows his continued facility for taking a sad sack character who might otherwise be branded as a loser and making him sympathetic, even a little heroic in a quietly desperate way. Patton Oswalt turned [...]

With a brief background on Nelson Mandela morphing from political prisoner/terrorist to president of a new South Africa, Invictus then leaps into the real focus of the story: Mandela’s drive to unify his countrymen through the national rugby team (long associated with apartheid) and their push for the World Cup. It’s an inspirational story, [...]

If this wasn’t a true story, it would seem incredibly pat and manipulative and impossibly rapid.  The Blind Side was based on the book Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, by Michael Lewis, and follows the amazing story of Michael Oher from the underbelly of society to the spotlight.  The story seems rushed, fueling its [...]

While apparently some of the characters in The Men Who Stare At Goats are composites and other narrative short cuts, this film asserts that “more of this is true than you would believe.” I found it fun to keep that in mind as the narrative went from kooky to wacky, from improbable to impossible. [...]

This story is well-enough known that I will indulge in some spoilers, mostly because some elements of this movie are beautiful and innovative, and some just plain did not belong. The aggregate score makes it a rental, because the highs were very high, but the lows very low. First of all, all performance-capture [...]

So close on the heel of one personal film (Where The Wild Things Are) comes this very, very personal film from the Coen brothers. So personal, I never felt a part of it. I have come to be a fan of Joel and Ethan Coen over the years, appreciating their taste for regional [...]

You know how Hollywood sometimes puts out two of the same movies in one year, like animated ants or volcanos or meteors?  The premise of Surrogates is kind of like that of Gamer, an idea that feels like an inevitable future, based on the truth of what we know about how avatars are used even [...]

The Informant! (yes with the exclamation point, though no more for the
rest of this review) positions itself as a wacky comedy and a sort of
industrial espionage thriller, adapted from Kirt Eichenwald’s novel.
Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon as a kind of Talentless Mr. Ripley) imagines
himself a master sleuth – or a master criminal – and most of [...]

Mike Judge’s forte has always been finding the beauty and absurdity in simple, regular folk. From Beavis & Butthead through Idiocracy, and of course cult favorite Office Space, Judge pokes at the stupid things that well-intentioned people can do, and the petty evils we all visit upon each other just trying to get by. [...]