Today Was a Fairytale
Way back before Disney rejuvenated itself by making animated musicals based on fairy tales sprinkled with witty songs, adult concerns, and a wisecracking modern...
My Wife Could Paint That
The way to understand Big Eyes is not as a movie about art nor as a Tim Burton film, though it’s both of those...
Hard Knocks
Going into the newest big-screen version of Annie, I actually had some hopes for its success. Yes, the Broadway show is a saccharine piece...
Gold Mountain
In English soccer, when a high-priced newly signed player goes bust, opposing fans will sometimes taunt the player and his team by singing, “What...
Roughing It
I remember the first time I saw Reese Witherspoon. It was in the 1996 satirical thriller Freeway, and she was playing a juvenile delinquent...
Go Down, Moses
Hollywood’s last big-budget adaptation of the book of Exodus, Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, hit movie theaters a full 58 years ago. By...
Eastward Bound
It has been nine years since Tommy Lee Jones made his directing debut with The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. That acclaimed Western, which...
Stop Hectoring Me
And now, ladies and gentlemen, comes one of the year’s most insufferable movies, Hector and the Search for Happiness. Simon Pegg’s collaboration with Edgar...
Physical Attraction
We’d all like to know what it’s like to be a genius, but it might well be both easier and more fruitful to make...
Fire Yourself
I was leery of Horrible Bosses 2, even though I liked the first one. You see, the director and the writers from the original...