Search for 2013

Oz the Great and Powerful is director Sam Raimi's prequel to The Wizard of Oz. This new vision of The Land of Oz is an imaginative mix of live-action and CGI that pays homage to the iconic images and timeless sense of wonder in the classic The Wiza...

Call it Godzilla (Toho version) on steroids. Or perhaps Transformers with a heart. Either way, there's no mystery what Pacific Rim is and, more importantly, what it delivers. It's the perfect summer spectacle, with giant robots pounding on monsters...

With a title like Pain & Gain and Michael Bay at the helm, this review looked like a great opportunity for a vitriolic screed, but that's not going to happen. Defying expectations, Pain & Gain not only represents one of the best movies Bay has made...

Most films about teenagers fall into one of two categories: nihilistic tales about angst-riddled kids and saccharine-infused Hollywood confections. To its credit, Palo Alto occupies a welcome middle ground. With a loose, at times almost dreamlike s...

I've seen movies like this more often than I'd like to admit: glitzy thrillers with less intelligence than a smart rutabaga where big-name actors pick up a paycheck while trying with limited success not to embarrass themselves and the studio keeps ...

Parker delivers just about what the average viewer would expect from it: a Jason Statham-flavored action thriller (as opposed to, say, a Matt Damon-flavored action thriller or a Rock-flavored action thriller). Statham, like John Wayne in his heyday...

With a title like Phantom, one might easily assume that this movie is a ghost story. In actuality, however, it's a submarine thriller loosely based on actual events from 1968. The tale told by Phantom falls into the realm of "historical fiction." A...

Part mystery investigation, part mismatched buddy film, and part condemnation of inhumane attitudes in 1950s Ireland and 1980s Washington, Philomena falls into the category of "too unbelievable to be fiction." Faithfully based on the true story tol...

Whodunits are rarely a good playground for Hollywood films. The average mystery, whether a stripped-down Agatha Christie-esque tale or a more complex endeavor, is too demanding for the structural constraints of a motion picture. As a result, when o...

When critics bemoan the dumbing down of movies, they're talking about stuff like The Purge. This is quite possibly the most moronic motion picture I have seen thus far in 2013 and that's saying a lot. The movie has obviously been constructed for th...