movie reviews

The title is 'World War Z,' but I can think up two other letters: "O" and "K." 'World War Z' is okay because it zips along with the fury of a computer-generated cascade of fast zombies. 'World War Z' is okay because Brad Pitt is a great leading man, even if his character has no depth. 'World War Z' is okay because there is always a fatalistic draw to see our social order tumble

The term "product placement" feels insufficient to describe the role of Google in 'The Internship.' This is not so much product placement in a movie as movie placement in a product. For two hours, viewers are treated to a series of bright, high-energy sales pitches for the San Francisco search engine and its vast array of products and services -- Google Play, Google Drive, Google Helplin

'Fast Five' attempted - and quite successfully I might add - a reboot of sorts for the entire 'Fast and Furious' franchise, turning a series of movies about car racing into one exciting heist film. It was big and brash and sweaty and a complete success. So where do you go from there? 'Fast and Furious 6' attempts to answer that question by adding an -er suffix to all those adjectives above. Bigger

'The Hangover' giveth and 'The Hangover' taketh away. The first 'Hangover' made Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and especially Zach Galifianakis stars, and it elevated Todd Phillips from middling Hollywood director to name-brand comic auteur. But in the film industry, success that surprising and enormous demands more success; the beast must be fed. But as 'The Hangover Part II' and especially the new '

J.J. Abrams is going to make the greatest 'Star Wars' movie in history. With 'Star Trek Into Darkness,' Abrams' follow up to the 2009 'Star Trek' reboot (or continuation of the series, if you are Spock Prime) he has solidified his position as a master of propulsive, visceral filmmaking. Dude knows where to put the camera, when the music should swell, when the characters should zing each another or

From the earliest days of his appearances in Marvel Comics' 'Tales of Suspense,' Tony Stark has always been modeled after aviator/inventor/industrialist Howard Hughes. With 'Iron Man 3,' Stark assumes a new dimension of Hughes' persona: that of the paranoid shut-in who, in his later years, became notorious for roaming his private floor of the Desert Inn Hotel in Las Vegas, freaking out about invis

'Oblivion' is best described as opportunity, squandered. Its landscape – conceptual and physical – feels remarkably unique and bursting with possibilities, but the exploration of both lacks originality, and energy. Joe Kosinski’s follow-up to 'TRON: Legacy' is, like its predecessor, a gorgeously mounted, inventive world-building endeavor, but it’s also equally bloodless -- ponderous without being

My disdain of the 'Scary Movie' franchise came early. I distinctly recall seeing the 'Scary Movie 2' poster, which featured Kathleen Robertson wearing a t-shirt that says "I See Dead People." This isn't a joke. It's just a reference. It isn't clever, it isn't witty - it's just saying a thing from another movie. It's not funny. Almost 10 years later, 'Scary Movie 5' still suffers from thi

My grandmother, Rhoda Singer, died earlier this year. She lived much of her life in Brooklyn and was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. Her favorite player was Pee Wee Reese, the Dodgers' scrappy white shortstop who famously silenced a racist Cincinnati crowd by putting his arm around his black teammate Jackie Robinson during pre-game warmups. I thought about my grandmother a lot while watching '42,' the new

You can buy replicas of Richard Attenborough's amber-tipped cane or you can listen to ten minute loops of Jeff Goldblum's oddball laugh but there's something you haven't been able to do in twenty years: hear the roar of a T. rex fighting two Velociraptors from thunderous, surround sound of big cinema speakers. Something you've never been able to do is see it in 3D or in IMAX. Until now. And you do