20 Feet from Stardom has style, it has pizzazz and most of all its got power, it’s saga of singers at the cusp of success continually giving every ounce of themselves to make it happen for someone else a universal inspirational daydream in every way that matters.

The brothers Cairnes stage their escalating series of unfortunate events with lackadaisical confidence, propelling things ever forward with jovial efficiency that’s as inventive as it is absurd. They spill a lot of blood, throwing guts and bits of flesh all over the place, doing it with a gorgeously energetic joy that’s continually impressive.

I’ve watched Berberian Sound Studio three times and I’m still not entirely certain I’ve got it all figured out. At this point, I’m fairly certain I’m not supposed to.

The Heat isn’t just the best female buddy comedy I’ve possibly ever seen, but it might be one of the best buddy comedies, no gender bias, no additional descriptors, I’ve ever seen. Period.

Emmerich knows how to stage action with the best of them, and in Tatum he has an action star willing to throw himself here and there with excitable ferocity. More, unlike Olympus Has Fallen for some reason this one ends up being a little easier to accept and take with at least a modicum of seriousness if only because the filmmakers refuse to treat their audience like imbeciles. White House Down isn’t exactly good, I’d never call it that, but it can be fun, and as such I can’t really begrudge anyone from making the choice to give this latest cinematic assault on the White House a chance.

The pacing, while measured, some might even go so far as to call it leisurely, felt spot-on as far as I was concerned, everything building with an unhurried malevolent elegance that kept the tension building and the suspense continually omnipresent.

I’m not sure what to write about Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring. The movie is as observationally distant as many of her previous films, especially Somewhere, to a lesser extent Lost in Translation, looking at its vapid, materialistic, fame-obsessed central group of teenage reprobates with the same disaffected malaise they themselves project. It’s aggressively nonjudgmental, the film choosing to view its protagonists with a detached superficiality that doesn’t connect emotionally but still manages to pack something of a major, uncomforting wallop all the same.

If you’re like me, and if you can handle all the dismemberments, skull crushing, decapitations and disembowelments, if you’re willing to keep your brain in check and allow for the fact stupid is as stupid does no matter how much you wish otherwise, than this not-really-a-fright-flick fright-flick might just be for you. Enter at your own risk.

Familiar Haunting a Ghostly Misfire Sophia (Harriet MacMasters-Green) has moved to the south of Italy for work with her free-spirited daughter Helena (Sabrina Jolie Perez). When one of the child’s teeth comes lose, stories about the Tooth Fairy and her wondrous magical charms are understandably spun. But when Helena starts collecting her fellow classmates’ teeth, […]