Search for 2014

Legos. They seem to have been around forever (actually, since 1949). As a kid, some 40 years ago, I can remember playing with them: colored plastic bricks that snapped together. Since then, the Lego empire has expanded, venturing into arenas previ...

"There are no guarantees. But there is also nothing to fear. We come from oblivion when we are born. We return to oblivion when we die. The astonishing thing is this period of in-between." -- Roger Ebert When Steve James, the acclaimed director ...

This may not sound like a recipe for cinematic success: a man, alone in a car as he makes a 90-minute trip to London, connects with the voices of the outside world via his mobile phone. Yet, with tremendous work by actor Tom Hardy anchoring a film ...

Expectations for Lucy based on television commercials and theatrical trailers will result in a skewed and inaccurate representation of the film. This is not, as the marketing department of Universal Pictures would have one believe, a kick-ass supe...

Working at his current pace, Woody Allen delivers one film per year. Unfortunately, it has been decades since Allen's endeavors have been consistently good. In fact, even as far back as the 1990s, quality movies have been more the exception than th...

Maleficent might best be described as an alternate universe re-imagination of Sleeping Beauty. Taking a page from Wicked (the stage show that presents Oz from the witches' perspective), Linda Woolverton's screenplay presents an inverted version of ...

Despite a strong opening and riveting first 45 minutes, The Maze Runner devolves into one of the weakest post-apocalyptic Young Adult movies to reach theaters in recent years. The film's inability to sustain the energy it starts with results in a d...

Men, Women & Children seeks to explore issues of communication in the digital era. The wide-ranging net ensnares a variety of subjects: the implications of ubiquitous pornography, the chasm separating the world views of children and parents, and th...

Movies that arrive in theaters with the tagline "based on a true story" often stray far from the historical basis underlying the narrative. As it's said, "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story." Unfortunately, in presenting the tale of...

It would be inaccurate to claim that A Million Ways to Die in the West is devoid of humor. It isn't. However, Seth MacFarlane's hit-and-miss spoof of Westerns has far more "misses" than "hits" and the actor-director-writer (Ted) doesn't seem to rea...