Meathead action redux. Fast & Furious 6 has a few giddy and bummer surprises for those who have followed the series. But the first thing that comes to the mind are the most ridiculous, aerodynamically impossible action sequences I have ever seen. I say that in praise. The audience erupted in a crescendo of [...]

A different kind of dud than the last one. The Hangover Part III avoids the retread problem that plagued the déjà vu feeling of the last one. It has the comically gory sight of a giraffe decapitated. F$&%ed up $#*% has never been an inhibition for this series. But there’s not any intoxication embedded into the plot, not unless you count Ken Jeong as [...]

It should have stopped at “Sunset.” Before Midnight updates us with the love affair between two sublime characters, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy), that were introduced to us in the wonderful “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset.” Sublime they are not, no more [...]

The Before Midnight press conference was held recently in Los Angeles at the Four Seasons hotel. Looking back, I attended the “Before Sunset” press junket nine years ago. I loved the 2004 film, but the junket was a basic affair with the humble talent coming into roundtables. The mood by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy was confiding [...]

It’s taken a number of years to recognize Scott McGehee and David Siegel as top-rank filmmakers. What Maisie Knew (in theaters now and expanding to more cities Friday, May 24th) is their new emotional heart-wrencher, but it also reveals them as courageous filmmakers by keeping the entire film in the point-of-view of 6-year old Maisie [...]

I admit I thought I was going to tune-out, but as it turned out, I was actually fervidly drawn into this film. What Maisie Knew has the audacity to follow the perspective of a 6-year old girl (played by newcomer Onata Aprile) and dares to stay there. Her parents (Julianne Moore and Steve Coogan, both uncompromisingly self-absorbed) are divorcing and [...]

I say you can’t spend your life digesting only good and morally upright stories, you need to witness a few that feature pompous, wrong-headed people so you understand contrasts in the universe. The mordantly funny masterpiece The Squid and the Whale stars Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney as divorcing parents [...]

Another overblown blockbuster from the J.J. Abrams factory. Star Trek Into Darkness features many cliffhangers, explosions, phasers, photon torpedoes and other Trekkie lore – and it also assimilates incidents that echo 9/11 and War on Terror into the plotting [...]

Black & White Noah Baumbach comedy depicts an unstable girl in New York trying to find her way in an expensive city. Greta Gerwig plays the girl Frances Ha, lovable but at the same time killing her own opportunities. Part of her failures come from her loose acrid tongue, part of it is not seizing invitations [...]

Meant to be viewed by those who have followed and admired Canadian actor-writer-director Sarah Polley over the years. Stories We Tell is a candid family documentary that chronicles how Sarah was conceived by an extramarital affair. It might also shed life as to how she came up with the idea and construction of her previous [...]

Spineless. The English Teacher is a Julianne Moore as spinster movie that could have gone for subtle and introspective instead of broad and witless farce which it wanes into. Ms. Linda Sinclair is losing faith after going on a series of bad blind dates (aha!). Moore nearly [...]

Baz Luhrmann’s distinctive razzmatazz on a celebrated American novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby starts fast with giving us New York of the Roaring Twenties. The speeded up camera virtuosity captures the drunken highs and elations of aristocratic partygoers, in that sense, it’s a virtuoso humdinger like [...]