Search for 2012

Films can be tremendous vehicles for escapism - paths to freeing oneself from worldly concerns and considerations. They can also be a means of getting in touch with essential elements of humanity such as love, sacrifice, and mortality. Those three ...

Like Frankenstein and Hamlet, Anna Karenina is a literary touchstone that filmmakers return to on a regular basis. The first filmed version of the book was a 1910 German silent which has long since been lost to the ages. It was released shortly bef...

With a title like Arbitrage, it's reasonable to expect a story that navigates the byzantine labyrinth of the world's financial systems - perhaps a better companion piece to Wall Street than Money Never Sleeps. However, although there is a little of...

Argo proudly bears the "based on a true story" label, and this is one occasion when the caption is important to how the movie is perceived. Often, this is a meaningless citation but, when documenting historical events such as the ones depicted here...

The Avengers kicks ass. It's a loud, brash spectacle that blows up as many things as a Transformers outing but without the same grinding sense of soulless robotic monotony. For years, Marvel has been building to this movie, painstakingly introducin...

Two elements comprise a comedy: content and composition. The first relates to what the joke is about; the second refers to how the joke is told. Good humor can be ruined by bad composition - think of someone who tells a "funny story" but messes up ...

Sometimes a movie is so good it makes me glad I'm in the business of writing reviews. Bachelorette is not one of those. Sometimes a movie is so bad it makes me want to go into seclusion and never see another film. Bachelorette is one of those. ...

Let me start this review off on a positive note. Battleship is in 2-D, not 3-D, so there are no issues with motion blur, low light levels, and general eye discomfort. There are some nice establishing shots of Hawaii; I might want to go there if I w...

Contained within Beasts of the Southern Wild are moments of fragile, understated magic that emphasize the relationship that exists even between the most neglectful, irresponsible fathers and their daughters. The problem with Beasts of the Southern ...