In "Flight," for which he collaborates with director Robert Zemeckis for the first time, Denzel Washington combines the skills of a pilot-ninja with the substance abuse problems of a Lindsay Lohan. Clearly the director and the actor working together make for great chemistry thanks to their respective skill sets) and yet, “Flight” leaves you wishing for more. Washington's Captain Whip Whitaker is no stranger to boozing and snorting cocaine

Nikolaj Arcel's sweeping costume drama “A Royal Affair”—Denmark's Oscar entry—follows the struggles of young Queen Caroline (Alicia Vikander) as she tries to adapt to her new role as wife of Denmark's obviously insane King Christian VII (Mikkel Boe Folsgaard). The year is 1766, and Caroline, a native Brit, is forced to make do with her unpredictable husband and strange new surroundings with hardly any friendship or encouragement

Anyone who’s ever read James Patterson’s "Alex Cross" novels knows that the Psychologist/Detective is far from the AARP card-carrying veteran made famous by Morgan Freeman. He’s actually a single father living with two kids (with a third on the way, plus a possible promotion to the FBI) and his grandma, Nana Mama. So “Alex Cross” is a reboot of sorts, one with the wild card of having Tyler “Madea” Perry

Nicole Kidman pees on Zac Efron to subdue a jellyfish sting in “The Paperboy” and you wish she would do the same thing to subdue perverted, sensationalistic writer-director Lee Daniels (“Precious”). What a load of pointless drivel this all turns out to be. Efron stars as Jack, a college dropout living in the backwater Florida town of Moat County in 1969, who spends much of his lazy life either masturbating or swimming. When his brother

For his follow-up to “In Bruges” director Martin McDonagh has assembled a cast touched upon by the eccentric-comedy gods. Everything about “Seven Psychopaths” defies convention and logic, an asset that adds to the outright lunacy on display. I loved how over-the-top it is, both in its bloody violence (people set afire, heads sawed off, a sequence so dementedly funny I wouldn’t want to ruin it) and willingness to

Ben Affleck’s gradual rise from the “Gigli” debacle to alpha-director-status is doubtlessly one of Hollywood’s best comebacks. And yet, the actor-director faces his toughest challenge yet with “Argo,” out in theaters today, a fresh take on a controversial international affairs incident. Six American diplomats stuck inside Tehran during the 1979-80 events there (hostage crisis, etc.) are rescued by a CIA extraction team under the pretense that

It started with "The Ring" in 2004 but now with the new movie "Sinister," in which a ghost haunts reels of old home movies, the poltergeists are putting more of a curse on film than 3-D. Writer-director Scott Derrickson, no stranger to the horror genre after dealing with demons in "The Exorcism of Emily Rose," tries his hardest to create a mood and some jump-out-of-your-skin scares but this new haunting is a far

It was a little surprising to me that Tim Burton had never made a boy-and-his-dog story before, so much so, in fact, that I looked this up only to find that he had made “Frankenweenie” in 1984 as a live-action short film. Twenty-eight years later and you can tell that this story, now in animated form, is still a passion project. Victor (Charlie Tahan) is a lanky, dark-haired high-school loner who prefers making 8mm movies and working on

After “Battlefield Earth” who would've thought that scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard would ever be portrayed seriously in film again? “The Master,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s first film since 2007’s “There Will Be Blood”, does just that. It neither condemns nor justifies the religion, but centers on the fascinating struggle of two men. Joaquin Phoenix’s faux mental breakdown is over, thankfully, and he has returned to acting in

“Dredd 3D” is a meat grinder of a flick that assaults the audience’s sensory organs with wave after wave of mayhem, death and gratuitousness. This is a movie that aspires to the ne plus ultra of rated R, possessing qualities that will surely enshrine it as a cult favorite but damn it for those who want more than full-fledged viscerality. Forget the Stallone version from 1995: “Dredd 3D” is the true heir to its comic book source. Judge