Winslet is superb. She doesn’t cut corners, refuses to soften the edges, making sure Adele doesn’t become some sort of caricature of feminine regret and disappointment while at the same time not asking the audience to warm to her in ways that would feel forced or unnatural.

That Awkward Moment so quickly devolves into something reprehensible and abhorrent it almost feels like I’m being disingenuous when I try to claim there was a good movie hiding here before it all went tragically wrong. But there was, make no mistake, that fact only making the film as a whole that much more a dispiriting experience when all is finally said and done.

Intriguing Vermeer an Underdeveloped Portrait In all honesty, I am not quite sure I get all the fuss and acclaim for the documentary Tim’s Vermeer. Do I respect it? Certainly. Filmed over an eight year period, following inventor and visionary tech wizard Tim Jenison (it’s doubtful the Desktop Revolution – look it up – would […]

Well-Meaning Shelter Does Its Subjects a Disservice Agnes ‘Apple’ Bailey (Vanessa Hudgens) has escaped. She’s 16, frightened, desperate and extremely angry, living with her junkie prostitute of a mother June (Rosario Dawson) proving to be untenable. Worse, she thinks she might be pregnant, making every move she makes even more a complicated burden. Turning to […]

For all the wannabe whiz, for all the attempts at producing a thunderous bang, I, Frankstein is one franchise starter I doubt is going to be producing a sequel anytime soon.

Serpentine Stranger a Bewitchingly Seductive Noir Frank (Pierre Deladonchamps) is a quiet man. He spends his summers at a secluded lake in rural France looking for brief sexual encounters with a variety of nameless, practically faceless men. One day he meets the dashingly sexy Michel (Christophe Paou), and while danger signs are present for whatever […]

The movie doesn’t deliver, not at the end, at least, but it does carry its tension to term, that in and of itself almost good enough to make seeing the baby born moderately worthwhile.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, clunky title aside, does a nice job of making Clancy’s hero relevant again. It brings him into the post-9/11 world with invigorating and suspenseful aplomb, and while Branagh’s effort doesn’t rise to the same heights as the two Phillip Noyce directed efforts with Ford, and is certainly light years away from the near-perfection of John McTiernan’s The Hunt for Red October, it’s still a solidly entertaining thriller that’s easy to enjoy.

Insightful Father Showcases Heartbreaking Universal Truths Ryota Nonomiya (Masaharu Fukuyama) and his wife Midori (Machiko Ono) are celebrating the fact their six-year-old son Keita (Keita Ninomiya) has secured a spot in an exclusive primary school. At the same time, they have also learned from the hospital he was born at that a shocking mistake was […]