This Disney film comes not from Pixar, but from Walt Disney Animation Studios and in style, story, and sensibility, this looks like classic Disney moviemaking. Somehow, for reasons I can’t define, it just feels different […]
Tag: movie review
review – philomena
As a director, Stephen Frears knows how to find the heart, the humanity, and the humor in situations and create movies that tell small stories in wonderfully intelligent ways. He did it in “Dirty Pretty […]
Review – Nebraska
So what we have here is a beautifully-photographed movie – in black and white – with a wonderfully-underwritten performance at its center – telling a story of ordinary days filled with ordinary people who do […]
Review – The Book Thief
This movie was shot by Florian Ballhaus (he also shot “The Devil Wears Prada”) and his work here is so perfect and polished, it’s initially distracting. It’s 1939 in Germany, a time of dark desperation, […]
Review – The Counselor
Halfway through this almost two-hour movie, the Counselor (Fassbender) asks Westray (Pitt): “What happens next?” A better question would have been: “What’s happened so far?” The answer to both: “It’s difficult to determine.” If you’ve […]
Review – All Is Lost
In some ways, this is a perfect title. Here is what will be “lost” if you decide to see this movie: your time, the price of admission, the cost of transportation to get there, any […]
Review – The Fifth Estate
“Man is least himself when he talks as his own person,” Julian Assange (Cumberbatch) says early in this film. “But if you give him a mask, he will tell you the truth. …if we could […]
review – ‘don jon’
Joseph Gordon Levitt is arguably one of the best actors of his generation. Scarlett Johansson started out at a very young age displaying huge talent. Now he and she are together in a movie with […]
review – ‘enough said’
This is an old-fashioned love story for grown-ups. It’s a story about second chances jeopardized by second guesses, about ordinary days changed by an extraordinary coincidence, about two people who were not attracted to each […]
review – ‘closed circuit’
Red herrings are one thing. But this murder mystery seems filled with partially fileted fish of all kinds in the hands of a chef who can’t decide on a recipe. This is a dark and […]
review – ‘the butler’
This is a kind of ‘Forrest Gump’ with a focus on the Civil Rights Movement. It’s the story of segregation slowly, if incompletely, becoming integration – told through the story of one remarkable man – […]
reveiw – ‘grown ups 2’
Picture this: it’s a summer morning back in the days of your youth, nothing much going on, nothing planned. One by one, your friends – they all live in the neighborhood, as they did back […]
review – ‘deliver us from evil’
Somehow, these exorcism flicks still manage to get produced. I’m only surprised because of the lack of potential variety in the premise. Since “The Exorcist”, we’ve seen quite a lot of exorcisms in cinema. I’ve […]
review – ‘the way way back’
This movie will touch you, it will tickle you, it will make you smile and nod in knowing recognition because this is a movie that remembers what it was like to be fourteen years old […]
review – ‘the lone ranger’
For seventy years, the Lone Ranger has been about “…a fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust, and a hearty Hi-Yo Silver…” Here, it’s about mugging for the camera, massive special […]
review – ‘man of steel’
The budget for this film was $225 million. I wonder if any of it was spent on the script? The trailers had convinced me it would be my favorite super-hero movie of the summer – […]
review – ‘this is the end’
I need to trust my intuition. I had seen the trailer for this movie several times and it always looked like a piece of mindless garbage, a bit of very low budget stream-of-consciousness acting by […]
review – ‘fast and furious 6’
If you’re not a ‘car guy’ – and I’m definitely not a ‘car guy’ – this is a really long and very repetitious movie. But it’s not a disappointing one because what you get is […]
review – ‘francis ha’
The whole movie is one long conversation between, about, among and around two best friends, Frances (Gerwig) and Sophie (Sumner) who are, in the words of Frances herself, “…like an old married couple. We talk […]
review – ‘star trek: into darkness’
JJ Abrams has made a terrific movie. Despite the fact that I’ve seen all the ‘Star Trek’ movies, but seem unable to remember the plots of any of them…I loved this one. Maybe it’s because, […]
review – ‘pain and gain’
In the Movie Bible according to Michael Bay, this movie’s director, the first – maybe only – commandment is this: Thou shalt do everything to excess or thou shalt not bother doing it at all. […]
review – ‘mud’
“Mud” is a tale of elemental things — falling in love, and putting your faith in others, and spending summer days with your best friend when you’re fourteen years old. It moves slowly, carefully, laying […]
review – ‘ginger and rosa’
“I don’t want to die,” Ginger (Elle Fanning) says at one point in this quietly-insightful film. “I want to grow up and do things.” What Fanning is “growing up” to do here is to deliver […]
review – ‘the call’
The sound you hear is my heart still pounding in my chest. This is what a tight script, taut direction, tension-building editing, and a two-thirds-terrific – and sometimes terrifying – movie looks like. There is […]
review – ‘oz the great and powerful’
How good could a movie be if five different men received at least partial credit as directors – and nineteen writers contributed to the screenplay? And, what if the most evil and imposing character in […]
LOS ANGELES FILM REVIEW 