When done right, few tales are more riveting than a person’s descent into madness. Alfred Hitchcock proved this time and time again and Jeff Nichols reinforces it in “Take Shelter,” a film likely to have been lauded by the master of suspense himself. Anchored by the performances of Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain, “Shelter” broods […]

It might not be an election year, but politics never take a break from being cutthroat. “The Ides of March” peels back the curtain on election campaigns, in this case those of two Democrats vying for their party’s nomination. Based on the play “Farragut North” by Beau Willimon, who had a hand in the screenplay, “Ides” […]

Never underestimate robot boxing. Despite reaching for nearly every cliché in the family-oriented sports underdog drama handbook short of titling the film “Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots,” DreamWorks delivers a undeniable crowd-pleaser with “Real Steel.”

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

The best spies usually work alone. There’s a reason James Bond and Jason Bourne fly solo, which is generally assumed to be that it lessens the margin for error and prevents emotional attachments. Perhaps it’s really because the we like to uncover the dark secrets that make a ruthless assassins tick, which isn’t too much […]

Late-summer Civil Rights dramas don’t come around much. In fact, late-summer dramas don’t come around much period, but “The Help” has just the right pinches of humor and bright colors to keep it from becoming a weighty affair more suited for the winter awards contenders. Don’t assume, however, that come the turn of seasons that […]

Director Ruben Fleischer should call the “making of” documentary of this film “86 Minutes or Less.” The filmmaker who landed squarely on the Hollywood directing hot list with 2009’s rollicking sleeper hit “Zombieland” has crammed the action and laughs into another unusually short runtime. Distinct advantages exist to the “all business”  attitude toward filmmaking, but […]

The one thing that always made the “Planet of the Apes” a bit campy was actors in make up and monkey suits. So in one instance, here’s where technology, specifically the use motion-capture technology as seen in “Avatar,” can almost single-handedly justify revisiting an old franchise. But the apes of “Rise of the Planet of […]

Oh, the body-swap comedy. You know how it starts, you know how it ends and frankly, you know most of what’s in between. To name an R-rated buddy version of this formula “The Change-Up” is essentially serving up a thick slice of irony, yet somehow “The Hangover” writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore and “Wedding […]

A story of average guys who become small-time crooks always has comedic value; add to that the blue-collar motivation of wanting to kill your boss because he/she makes your life miserable? Golden. Documentary director Seth Gordon (“The King of Kong”) ropes up an impressive ensemble to make “Horrible Bosses,” a vaguely dark comedy with a […]

The answer to the obvious question hovering around Jon Favreau’s latest action blockbuster is yes, “Cowboys & Aliens” is as ridiculous as the title sounds. Yet blame doesn’t quite belong on Favreau’s shoulders or that of star Daniel Craig or the rest of the cast; rather, the failure of this alien-infested Western results from the […]

If I had the ability to time travel (and who’s to say I don’t, because I’d never tell you if I did) and felt inclined to show a movie to the citizens of the ’20s or ’30s that would fully capture for them life in the 21st Century because I wouldn’t be able to take them there […]

As far as superheroes go, they don’t get much campier than the “Star-Spangled Man.” A super soldier dressed in red, white and blue who bashes in Nazi skulls with his all-American shield? Undoubtedly, Captain America served a very specific purpose when he debuted in 1940, but 70 years later, Marvel Studio has found a way […]