The first time I met Joseph Gordon-Levitt was for a picture called Manic, about a young man in crisis, over his head with anger issues. I still recall the marked intensity of the then nineteen-year-old, clad in skinny corduroys and a CBGB tee, and…
Read MoreThe Perks of Being a Wallflower is one of the most sensitive movies ever made about teenagers. At a time in American movies where teens are vapid aliens who speak/text in too-cool poseur dialogue de rigueur, Hollywood has reached its nadir in depicting the…
Read MoreLooper is an inventive sci-fi picture that asks a few provocative questions, mainly—if your future self traveled back in time and you were able to meet, what might happen? If it doesn’t exactly deal with that paradox, it nonetheless provides a high-concept and imaginative…
Read MorePitch Perfect almost is just that, a roaring comedy about dueling collegiate a capella teams featuring more laughs than just about any comedy this year, and that’s saying something in a year that’s brought us such offbeat gems as Safety Not Guaranteed and Ruby…
Read MoreThere’s something immensely satisfying about Clint Eastwood’s current movie persona as the grizzled old man who has seen it all and has no patience for any of it. He did this curmudgeon in spite of himself routine in 2008’s Gran Torino to great effect,…
Read MoreYou can’t dismiss a B-movie merely for its derivations from other movies—most are predicated upon familiar tropes that usually never fail to get the audience amped up, particularly in the case of horror movies, the genre of all genre movies. Cue the darkness, ominous…
Read MoreWell-meaning and solidly acted, The Words doesn’t quite work as a movie, but it’s a sometimes thoughtful and entertaining picture about the relationship between art and life, moral lapses, betrayals and how we live with them. It’s not a compelling drama, but it’s well…
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