JUSTICE LEAGUE is a film with many problems. Some are inherent in an origin-style story that introduces several characters to what the filmmakers hope will be an audience eager to follow their further, individual, adventures. Some are just inexplicable. Take the plot device that is nothing short of asinine, and which I can’t discuss without… Read More »
BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE
For most of BATMAN V SUPERMAN’s bloviated pretension, I was merely bored. This half-baked idea studded with ponderous pronouncements, shockingly sedate action sequences, and the simulacrum of serious philosophical inquiry plodded along, weighed down by an overstuffed plot and an underdeveloped narrative. But when we arrived at a meticulous recreation of the deposition from the… Read More »
THE CHANGELING
THE CHANGELING, directed and produced by Clint Eastwood, is based on a true story so Kafka-esque that it staggers the imagination. In March of 1928, Christine Collins came home from work to discover her nine-year-old son, Walter, was missing. Her call to the Los Angeles police for help was rebuffed because the boy hadn’t been… Read More »
JULIE & JULIA
If Julia Child had not chosen the right moment to powder her nose at an embassy party in Paris, she might never have met Simone Beck, and there might never have been the classic cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. If Julie Powell, at the end of a particularly trying day as a government… Read More »
LEAP YEAR
If anything could have saved LEAP YEAR, it would have been the unalloyed star quality of its two leads, Amy Adams and Matthew Goode. Even in this slight, contrived, and predictable flick, they rise above the material, bringing depth where there is none, and charm where there is precious little. The excuse for the action… Read More »
MUPPETS, THE
THE MUPPETS have always had a sweetly subversive humor about them. They were never mean spirited, but when they were at their best, the jokes were sharp with a rollicking sense of the absurd and a keen sense of characterization. Jason Segal, co-writer and co-star of the latest Muppets vehicle, has homed in on exactly what gave… Read More »