Forgettable Chemistry a Drug-Addled Nightmare Better Living Through Chemistry is a bad movie. Worse, there was no reason for it to be. Expertly cast, reasonably well paced and featuring a decent enough premise (small town pharmacist feeling like his life is in a depressing rut begins an affair with a seductively glamorous local who introduces […]

[The Den (2013) is] pretty nasty stuff, there’s no denying that, and I’m not kidding when I say it’s not remotely surprising as to where everything is headed to. But the getting there? That’s a whole different matter, Donohue building tension and suspense beautifully before unleashing a climactic sequence that comes close toi outdoing the anything-goes ballistics of the “Safe Haven” segment of V/H/S 2.

Cryptic Enemy Weaves a Tangled Web Adam (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a timid, unsure of himself college professor who nonetheless has a gorgeous blonde girlfriend, Mary (Mélanie Laurent), who by all accounts appears to love him flaws and all. Anthony (also Gyllenhaal) is a snarling, self-obsessed actor on the rise married to a gorgeous blonde, Helen […]

Anderson’s Budapest Hotel a Comedic Masterwork I’ve said more than a handful of times in the past that the works of Wes Anderson are arguably made for certain palates, each motion picture a fanciful journey into a highly stylized world acquired tastes adore while everyone else scratches their collective chins wondering what all the fuss […]

Is it any surprise that Need for Speed is dumb movie?

Ambitious Empire Almost Rises to the Occasion 300: Rise of an Empire is, for the most part, set concurrently to the events depicted in Zack Snyder’s audacious, hugely successful (and somewhat influential) adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel 300. Instead of focusing on one key event, however, this movie, also based on a Miller graphic […]

Charming Mr. Peabody & Sherman a Jovial Historical Jaunt After the opening prologue to DreamWorks’ Mr. Peabody & Sherman I was deathly afraid I was about to watch an animated movie that was going to outright murder a beloved piece of my own personal childhood. The first act of the movie, set in and around […]

Child’s Pose a Prescient Evisceration of Societal Privilege In her eyes, steely-eyed architect Cornelia Keneres (Luminita Gheorghiu) has been a wonderful mother, gifting her son Barbu (Bogdan Dumitrache) all he could have wanted. This makes their estrangement all the more upsetting. Why does he distance himself from her? What could she ever have done to […]

Absurd Non-Stop Somehow Still Flies High Federal Air Marshall Bill Marks (Liam Neeson) is having a bad day. He’s an alcoholic. He smokes too much. He doesn’t particularly care for his job anymore. For that matter, he doesn’t believe he’s still any good at it. The flight to London is one he doesn’t want to […]