2013 Homepage Archive Stories

Jazzy, fizzy and often quite fun, Baz Luhrmann’s “Pretty Good Gatsby” takes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great American Novel out for a sometimes dazzling, always irreverent, spin. The gauzy picture-postcard 3-D production design and superb leading players breathe life into the Jazz Age novel. But the “Moulin Rouge

Once you’ve destroyed Pearl Harbor and let robots rampage across the Earth a few times, your whole idea of a buddy picture has got to be warped. Elephantiasis sets in, even on a caper comedy with daft characters and silly situations. Michael Bay’s post-”Transformers” action comedy “Pain & Gain” is

“Marriage is like a phone call late at night,” Robert De Niro says, in dulcet voice-over mode, at the outset of “The Big Wedding.” “First comes the ring, and then you wake up.” Rim shot, please. Except in Justin Zackham’s sedated farce, there are no rim shots. The jokes are just splayed o

Some actors are lucky. In the third act of their careers, they become dream versions of their own parents, or grandparents. Paul Newman did that. So did Katharine Hepburn. We got to know them, and love them, at one age. Then, against every Hollywood dictum, they were allowed to mature, to mellow, as they acquired a few more years. They weren&rsq

Relentless, pitiless, bloody and intense - that’s the remake of Sam Raimi’s “The Evil Dead.” But is this “Evil Dead” (they dropped the “The” in the title) any good? Yes and no. It has several genuinely hair-raising moments and presents, for your edification and enjoyment, some of the most g

Forget blowing the images up to IMAX size and converting the lunging velociraptors and T. Rexes into 3-D. The best reason to revive “Jurassic Park” for its 20th anniversary is Jeff Goldblum. Yes, children, there was a time when Goldblum was sci-fi’s “ultimate explainer,” as producer Dean Devlin labeled him i

The world could use a few more movies like “Camp.” It’s far from perfect. The acting ranges from compellingly strong to painfully amateurish. Director and writer Jacob Roebuck at times shows a competent skill at filmmaking, but he also has a tendency to linger on shots and pile on the emotional baggage, especially with

People have been trying to film Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” the talismanic Beat novel, just about since the day it was published in 1957. “Heart Beat,” the 1980 semi-biopic, with John Heard as Kerouac; Nick Nolte as his madman muse, Neal Cassady; and Sissy Spacek as Cassady’s second wife, Carolyn, captured a

In the future, hunger, violence and money have disappeared. Lying is unthinkable. And stealing - from the place where one acquires one’s every need, a building labeled “Store” - is pointless. Because we’re all wearing spotless white suits and driving shiny, chrome-plated Lotus Evoras. Well, a lot of us are. Humani

A better-than-average, gravity-defying ninja duel leads to an epic chase - by leaps, swings and ziplines - through the Himalayas in the big set piece sequence of “G.I. Joe: Retaliation.” Masked villains in red ninja suits chase Snake Eyes and Jinx as they attempt to spirit a ninja villain out of a mountaintop lair. They scamp

For those who thought the last Bruce Willis movie was a little light on the casualty list, “Olympus Has Fallen” arrives toting the biggest body count since “Die Hard II.” Bystanders and tourists, soldiers, cops and Secret Service agents fall by the score in a movie about the unthinkable — a terrorist ground

Tina Fey makes funny TV shows, funny movies and funny books. Director Paul Weitz often goes for something beyond funny - emotional stories of parents and children trying to puzzle out something beyond flesh and blood that bonds them. She did “30 Rock” and “Date N

Spring break: It’s every bit as much fun as you think it is. Until it isn’t. “Spring Breakers” is Harmony (“Gummo”) Korine’s fever-dream of something he never experienced — an orgy of sand, sin and snorting. And if his cameras — cellphone video inserts blur through the narrati

Skip past the lame title and weary Stone Age premise. “The Croods” is the first pleasant surprise of spring, a gorgeous kids’ cartoon with heart and wit, if not exactly a firm grasp of paleontology. It’s about a family of cave men and women who have survived, unlike their neighbors, by minimizing risk. But risk is

There’s a suggestion of vampirism in the title of “Stoker.” The stylish chiller shares its name with Dracula’s author, but its fixation on blood moves in a different direction - deposits, not withdrawals. The tale concerns bad blood being transfused from one generation to the next. The blood relations in question

Rare is the thriller that goes as completely and utterly wrong as “The Call” does at almost precisely the one-hour mark. Which is a crying shame, because for an hour, this is a riveting, by-the-book kidnapping, an “Amber Alert” with a Hollywood budget and a director with a sense of urgency and camera lenses that put the a

An all-star comedy that leans on its stars to conjure laughs out of thin air, “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” is about veteran magicians who find themselves suddenly less relevant when Mr. New and Edgy shows up and upstages them on the Vegas Strip. An art-imitating-artist moment for Steve Carell and Jim Carrey? Maybe. But w

Hirohito sat on the Chrysanthemum Throne through the Japanese invasion of China, the attack on Pearl Harbor and World War II. But at the end of the war, there were two emperors in Tokyo. Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander of the Allied powers in the Pacific, ruled Japan as a potentate, overseeing reforms that turned the country away from milit

In the film world’s version of March Madness, Sam Raimi turns out to be a much better Tim Burton than Bryan Singer. Unlike “Giant Slayer” Singer, Raimi’s got a sense of humor. Taking on a prequel to the fairytale that frightened generations, Raimi does scary. And does it well. “Oz the Great and Powerful&rdqu

When I wore a Wonder Woman costume last Halloween, people kept asking where my Lasso of Truth was. Perhaps we’ll find it at a screening of “Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines,” which is being screened by The Independent Film Society of Colorado. The film will trace the evolution of the superheroine from he

One thing this current run of blockbuster fairytales inspired by Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” has taught us is how very hard it is to be Tim Burton. Multiple versions of “Snow White,” a comic splatter film “Hansel & Gretel” - some have attempted Burton’s visual whimsy, all have failed to

If you’ve signed a petition in the past five days expressing outrage at the Oscar night political incorrectness of Seth MacFarlane, stay far, far away from “21 and Over.” It might be best to avoid multiplexes altogether for the next two to four weeks, on the chance that you mix up theaters after a bathroom break, and wa

LOS ANGELES — While the giant Oscar statues are still being washed off and stowed away, planners are already struggling with the timing for next year's show in what could be a very early and very late awards season because of the 2014 Winter Olympics, which fall right in the middle of things from Feb. 7 to 23.

With jokes about domestic violence, breast-baring actresses, picking up Sally Field and a presidential assassination, Seth MacFarlane certainly didn't go soft during his first turn as Oscars host. MacFarlane has the good looks and suave manner of a typical show host, but he was a nontraditional choice for the Oscars. His creative

TORONTO — The former Canadian ambassador to Iran who protected Americans at great personal risk during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis said Monday it was good to hear Ben Affleck finally thank Canada after Affleck's film "Argo" won the Oscar for best picture. "Argo" came under criticism from some Canadians, including former amb