Search for 2012

Tag line #1: "An action-packed international thriller starring Bruce Willis, Sigourney Weaver, and soon-to-be Superman Henry Cavill." Tag line #2: "A box office disaster with perhaps the most uncharismatic action hero of the decade in a preposte...

Most of the time, I am irritated when a movie proclaims to be "based on a true story." In many cases, it's a gratuitous marketing ploy. For Compliance, however, it's useful information. Unlike many "based on true stories," this one closely follows ...

Contraband is the kind of thriller that offers just enough in the way of effective elements to assemble a two-minute trailer. When it comes to a 110-minute feature, however, the sketchiness of the plotting and the director's lack of sure-handedness...

Sometimes, even a little gratuitous nudity can't save a movie. This is one of those occasions. Cosmopolis easily trumps To Rome with Love as the biggest disappointment of 2012 from an established director. How can characters talk for so long an...

For most superhero franchises, the third movie is a trap. It's there that the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher iteration of Batman started its rapid descent. It's there that the Christopher Reeve Superman saga had the wheels come off. It's there that Sam...

Dark Shadows is a mess, and it's unclear whether its bizarre recipe of comedy, campy horror, and gothic melodrama will satisfy anyone, regardless of their familiarity with the source material. By attempting to be too faithful to Dan Curtis' cult TV...

The most disappointing aspect of Deadfall is its conventionality. For a thriller, it's light on surprises. After a thunderbolt of an opening sequence, the storyline unfolds in a predictable manner and the ending, despite providing a sense of closur...

One of the cleverest moments in Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator comes during the first five seconds: a memorial dedication to Kim Jong Il. It's all downhill from there. To be fair, the movie's relentlessly un-PC humor results in some hilarious seq...

Disconnect, Henry Alex Rubin's meditation on how we communicate in the age of electronics and social media, is a deeply flawed motion picture containing moments of brilliance that illustrate its strong thematic content. A triptych of tales connecte...

One of the great strengths of Quentin Tarantino's films is the way his love of cinema permeates every frame. From subtle, throw-away lines and in-jokes to more obvious nods (such as the "old fashioned" Columbia logo at the beginning or the '70s-sty...