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Dour <em>Die Hard</em>: <em>Olympus Has Fallen</em>, Reviewed.
If you're going to make a movie where the White House is destroyed and the fate of the American government hangs in the balance, it at least ought to be fun to watch. That may sound sacrilegious—I'm pretty sure even the Tea Party doesn't want Washington overrun by Korean terrorists—but after sitting...
A Big-Hearted Mess. <em>Admission</em>, Reviewed.
Admission is such a mess, its good ideas knotted up with its unfocused and bad ones, that even if you end up liking the damn thing, you may find yourself apologizing for its faults. Tina Fey's first movie to be released since 30 Rock ended reminds us that she can do more than Liz Lemon, and it's gre...
The Kind Of Trash You Love: <em>Spring Breakers</em>, Reviewed.
1. Spring Breakers is trashy: I'm not telling you something you don't know here. It's self-consciously trashy, but not in any sort of wry, ironic, removed way. It dives headfirst into its trash, wallowing in it, wringing it for every last drop of slime. This is a nothing movie about nothing people d...
Off To See A Snoozer. <em>Oz, The Great and Powerful</em>, Reviewed.
1. The notion of doing a prequel to The Wizard of Oz focused on Oz himself isn't an inherently terrible idea. The wizard, after all, is the one character in that story who's neither completely good nor bad; he's full of shit, sure, but he also means well for Oz and ultimately tries to grant everybod...
Colin Farrell, <em>Dead Man Down</em>, And Why It's Pointless For Bloggers To Give Actors Career Advice
It's common for film sites to do some kind of "career advice" column where they analyze a Hollywood star's trajectory and try to figure out what kinds of roles the actor should or shouldn't be doing. Will and I used to do this for The Projector, so I understand the impulse: You see a career that may...
Once Upon A Time, They Made Fantasy Movies Like This. <em>Jack The Giant Slayer</em>, Reviewed.
1. It's sort of amazing how low the bar has fallen for big tentpole action/fantasy films. With the rise of 3-D (and, more to the point, 3-D surcharges), spectacle is the minimum entrance requirement, and even that has been watered down to the point of monotony. You can pick your poison, but I've alw...
Your <em>Slightly</em> Early Oscar Predictions For 2014
The only thing we know for certain about next year's Oscars is that: a) Seth MacFarlane won't be hosting them, and b) It's pretty stupid to be talking about them already. But being stupid has never stopped me before....
Seth MacFarlane Wasn't The Worst Oscar Host Ever: In Defense Of A Boob
For Seth MacFarlane's critics, Sunday night was supposed to be the moment we finally got to see the guy get his comeuppance. A "billion" viewers around the world, one of the most prestigious gigs in all of entertainment: As Oscar host, this was his chance to justify his swiftly, perhaps inexplicably...
The Rock Saves The Day. <em>Snitch</em>, Reviewed.
Snitch isn't great, but if you're like me and have enjoyed Dwayne Johnson more than his movies, his latest helps justify our faith in the guy. This is a B-movie thriller built around a real incident that's meant to show us the lunacy of our government's drug policy—and yet the movie's not preachy or...
Your Grierson & Leitch Oscar Predictions: The Big Eight Categories You Actually Care About
Yesterday, to help you out with your pool, Grierson made predictions in all the technical Oscar categories. Today, we both make our predictions for the eight major categories, the ones you actually care about. Let's go to it....
Grierson & Leitch's Bold Predictions For The Oscar Technical Categories No One Understands
Come Sunday night, you may embark on that annual ritual: Filling out the bottom of your Oscar pool entry, pretending you know the difference between Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing. Will and I will both offer our picks for the eight major categories tomorrow, but today I'm going to offer my...
<em>A Good Day To Die Hard</em> Is The Worst <em>Die Hard</em> of Them All
As far as action movie franchises go, the Die Hard films hold up pretty damned well. The first one is obviously a classic: Grierson summed up its enduring charms quite well over at IFC. But the way the movies worked never seemed a proper fit for a franchise. The greatness of Die Hard lies in large p...
Valentine's Day Special: The Movie Couples That Don't Belong Together
We've never quite understood the appeal of going to movies for Valentine's Day. Movie-watching is, after all, a solitary activity in which a person sits in the dark staring straight ahead in silence for two hours. But people do it anyway. Perhaps that's because romance is the central activity of rou...
Brand New Star, Same Old Crap. <em>Identity Thief</em>, Reviewed.
Everybody is happy for Melissa McCarthy. After years on TV shows (Gilmore Girls, Mike & Molly) and small parts in movies (she's great in John August's The Nines), she broke through with Bridesmaids, getting an Oscar nomination in the process. She's a really funny lady who's ridiculously effervescent...
The Steven Soderbergh Experience: Brilliant, Modest, Fiercely Intelligent, Ultimately Disappointing
"I was watching one of those iconoclast shows on the Sundance Channel. Jamie Oliver said Paul Smith had told him something he hadn't understood until very recently: 'I'd rather be No. 2 forever than No. 1 for a while.' Just make stuff and don't agonize over it. Stop worrying about being No. 1. I s...
<em>Charles Swan</em> Will Make You Hate Charlie Sheen All Over Again
It always struck me as so strange that Oliver Stone, when he was making his name with Platoon and Wall Street, saw Charlie Sheen as his ideal everyman, the audience representative, the proxy, the innocent surrounded by the rot and corruption Stone sees around every corner. Even then, before the drug...
<em>Warm Bodies</em> Is the Zombie Romance You Didn't Know You Wanted
Of all the boogie monsters and creepy creatures in our public consciousness, the zombie is the most metaphorical by virtue of being the most inflexible. All the other monsters are too human: Vampires and werewolves and Frankenstein's monsters—they're all too motivated by reason, by desire, by upward...
Sundance Film Festival: Five Movies Everyone Will Be Talking About
Spending a week at the Sundance Film Festival, you can see a little bit of everything: horror movies, activist documentaries, experimental low-budget indies, even mainstream comedies starring the leads from Parks & Recreation. It's impossible to catch everything—scheduling issues kept me from buzzy ...
Rating Every Sketch In <em>Kentucky Fried Movie</em>, The Film <em>Movie 43</em> Wanted to Be
Tomorrow, the film Movie 43 opens, and if its stars have their way, you'll never know a thing about it. As amusingly detailed in the New York Post this week, the myriad of movie stars involved in Movie 43 — including Richard Gere, Naomi Watts, Halle Berry, Emma Stone, Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet —...
Cop Out. <em>Broken City</em>, Reviewed.
When Mark Wahlberg is at his best, it doesn't look as if he's acting. In fact, it hardly seems as if he's even thinking. Watch him in The Departed or I Heart Huckabees and he comes across as a flawed regular guy who just wants to do the right thing, even though his characters aren't always the brigh...