Most movies don’t know how to handle cancer. Heck, most people don’t know how to handle cancer — and I’m not talking about the patients. Cancer, or any other terminal illness for that matter, almost always plays some kind x-factor in a film — that is when a film even dares to enter a realm […]

  Finally, September ends with another litany of films. The month has been feast or famine; for every “Moneyball,” “Drive,” and “Contagion,” we’ve had a “Shark Night,” “I Don’t Know How She Does It” and “Abduction.” This week looks to be no exception. “50/50” has been drawing rave reviews while “What’s Your Number?” gets lumped […]

Baseball might have lost a ton of ground to football in popularity, but it’s still America’s pastime. And frankly, the tide can change quickly in football (only three NFL teams haven’t made the playoffs in the last 8 years), but in baseball, a chance to win the World Series doesn’t come around all that often. […]

To use a completely irrelevant but title-appropriate expression, when it comes to comedy, women tend to be the bridesmaids and never the bride. Prior to “Bridesmaids,” the only mainstream comedy driven by females that I can recall (at least in the Judd Apatow era) is Tina Fey’s “Baby Mama” back in 2008. Comedies preceded by […]

The September onslaught continues with many more choices for all groups. Families will probably want to seek out “Dolphin Tale,” adults will probably take interest in Brad Pitt’s latest, “Moneyball,” action junkies will get their fix with “Killer Elite” and “Twilight” fans have another opportunity to see Taylor Lautner on the big screen with “Abduction.”

Sports movies have always been preoccupied with what’s happening on the field, the court, the ring or what have you. They tell stories of underdogs defying the odds and champion values of honor, courage and determination. “Moneyball” peels back that obvious first layer yet achieves all those very same ends. The sport of baseball is […]

In a world post-“Avatar” and “District 9,” where lack of creativity can no longer be blamed on the limitations of special effects (if that was ever a scapegoat), the goal of the sci-fi movie has been to innovate. Filmmakers have completely abandoned the minefield of clichés that is the retro “Area 51” alien with a […]

This morning, if you are a Netflix subscriber you were apologized to, so let me start off by apologizing for not covering the big Netflix news this summer, which now matters all the more after the most recent announcement. The company’s announced change in pricing structure, which takes effect this month (for me on Wednesday […]

Welcome to “Drive,” Nicolas Winding Refn’s exercise in the tried and true lesson that less is more, and more when it follows less is pulse-pounding mayhem. Maybe somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of “Drive” could be considered “action” or “violence,” but Refn makes every second of it count. When each slowly mounting scene finally […]

Fall barrels on with quite the mix of offerings this weekend. From an independently driven (no pun intended but I like it) action drama to a female-targeted guilty pleasure to the sheer power of nostalgia, there be choices. “Drive” opens in the most theaters but not by much, and it could be that Disney’s animated […]

Fall brings one thing I don’t often cover on Movie Muse and that’s the festival circuit. With the festival circuit comes awards buzz and with awards buzz comes a few fall releases that are highly acclaimed that you’ll want to check out. Sometimes there are flat-out surprises, such as “The Social Network” last October. What […]

I’m tired of getting shredded in my weekly predictions. It’s time for some films to restore a sense of order to the box office and maybe at least two of our new offerings can do just that. The Tom Hardy-led MMA film “Warrior” and Steven Soderbergh’s thriller “Contagion” have gotten great reviews early on. Of […]

This fall is unusually weak as far as family-geared entertainment goes with only two animated films and three live-action offerings. Even those live-action films aren’t “mainstream” so to speak and have been under-publicized projects aiming for the heartstrings. What does all this mean? Expect a lot of money for our two animated options.

With the best action films saved for the summer, many of these films have varying degrees of drama built in, but that doesn’t make the slate any less promising. Some of these films (“Warrior,” “Drive,” “Machine Gun Preacher”) could make some noise, even if they never find awards attention or insane box-office dollars.

Animated talking-animal films since the dawn of CGI have gotten much more prolific. Now that animals can be illustrated with ease and superb realism (namely in textures such as fur, feathers and scales), the supply can meet the demand and almost every major movie studio has either its own animation division or a relationship with […]