Search for 2012

Madagascar 3 raises an interesting question about what movie-goers want from animated films: intelligent, thoughtful productions that use artwork, rather than live-action, to tell a story, or colorful crap that can be used to distract children for ...

If your expectations for Magic Mike have been formed by the trailers and the TV ads, you can be forgiven for anticipating a male version of Showgirls or Coyote Ugly. Keep in mind, however, that the director is Steven Soderbergh, not Paul Verhoeven,...

Okay, so maybe after seeing Tom Cruise scale the tallest building in the world in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, 21 stories doesn't seem that high... but it's still a long way down. And I'd be willing to bet Sam Worthington didn't do all his...

The Master is one of the most technically impressive films of 2012. It is the work of an artist; every shot is carefully composed. The set design, which recreates post-World War II America, is impeccable. The acting of the leads, Joaquin Phoenix an...

The problem with some franchises is that the studios don't know when it's time to quit. The lackluster nature of Men in Black II should have been a hint to Sony that the Men in Black series had run its course. Now, at least ten years beyond the "s...

Mirror Mirror is the latest attempt to rework the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves," into something new, adventurous, and appealing to 2012 movie-goers. The result is mixed: the affable, family-friendly motion picture i...

Few working directors are as consistently, dependably quirky as Wes Anderson, whose films tend to excite art house audiences while being ignored and bypassed by mainstream movie-goers. His latest, Moonrise Kingdom, represents one of his best, in la...

For a filmmaker like Joss Whedon, known world-wide for playing with huge budgets in genre entertainment, the choice to bring to the screen one of Shakespeare's most popular comedies using a low-budget, "experimental" style might seem an odd choice....

Whatever else it may be cited for, The Paperboy, Lee Daniels' follow-up to Precious, is not going be called "the feel-good movie of 2012." An unsettling period piece mystery (the period being the late 1960s), The Paperboy is steeped in the so-calle...

They could have called this Paranormal Inactivity. It's a rare horror franchise indeed that manages to remain fresh and creepy by the time it arrives at installment #4. Paranormal Activity, despite a terrific beginning, quickly grew stale and r...