• “Money Monster”

    I liked "Money Monster," thought I'd that off the top. If that seems like an unusual or lame or unusually lame way to start a film review, that's fine. I wanted to state it firmly. Because there are things in the Jodie Foster-George Clooney political thriller that just made the rounds of the ongoing Cannes Festival that should go wrong. To start with, "Money Monster" quickly violates two of my dearest “signs that you’re watching

  • The Monuments Men

    This is the way the world ends, or starts to end, in George Clooney’s “The Monuments Men”: with a bang. In the film’s opening scenes, Hubert and Jan van Eyck’s “Ghent Altarpiece” is loudly dismantled, panel by panel, and prepared—too late, though—for a secret hiding place. The clock is ticking for its fellow masterpieces. World War II is raging and Hitler, an unpromising art student before he became Der Führer, fancies himself

  • Gravity

    Alfonso Cuaron’s space station disaster saga “Gravity” is an intellectually-soft video game, a SuperMario of space debris and a disappointment as a space-survival story.

    A great deal of praise is being heaped on the 3-D outer space experience, labeled as immersive and hypnotic. Comparisons are being drawn to the upside-down, gravity-free experience

  • Supporting Sudan-the Clooney and Russell arrests

    A couple of arrests of note in the last 24 […]

  • The Descendants

    Pauline Kael famously stated that great films are rarely perfect films. Do we ever wonder about the opposite? Are perfect films rarely great films? As the ultimate easy swallow, The Descendants, the latest release from Sideways writer/director Alexander Payne, has been practically pieced together by magical gold statuettes in the advanced laboratory of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It’s been, why, since

  • The ides of March

    Don’t expect the Ides of March to overturn the established wisdom regarding politics, i.e., anyone entering that world do so at their own peril--this is still the dirtiest game in town. The optimistic hopey-changey Hollywood message died with “Mr. Smith goes to Washington.” Nowadays, disillusionment and a hardening of both heartstrings and arteries are bound to occur. But despite not delivering anything new, the film carries

  • Clooney gears up for Mostra

    Venice is gearing up for its 68th Mostra, scheduled to run from August 31 to September 10 and opening with George Clooney’s “The Ides of March,” in competition. The film, based on the play “Farragut North” by Beau Willimon, is the timely story of a U.S. governor, the democrat Mike Morris, running for president.

  • UNINSPIRING "THE AMERICAN"

    By CRAIG YOUNKIN – September 2, 2010 They say that […]

  • Up in the Air

    Air captures the way we live in a downsizing world. […]

  • Fantastic Mr. Fox

    Smart. Witty. Cool. Hip. Imaginative. Different. And, like any good […]