CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE is everything that the perfect bromance flick should be, starting with the improbable but undeniable chemistry between stars Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson. Add a script that shows them off to best effect, with its wicked sense of the absurdity and suspense of the situations in which these two find themselves, and what… Read More »
Gary Oldman on Inspiration, Stillness, and Bedroom Acting.
Click here to listen to the interview. Gary Oldman is an actor known for disappearing into his roles, and playing George Smiley, a spymaster known for being able to disappear into the background is a tour de force for him. When I spoke to him on November 16, 2011, I was most interested in asking… Read More »
SPECTRE
There are very specific things we want in a James Bond film. Great action, dastardly villains who are larger than life and twice as buggy, and Bond girls who have evolved over the years to be a bit more than merely a pulchritudinous interlude. In Bond, as incarnated by Daniel Craig, we want a steely… Read More »
BRIDGE OF SPIES
Clad, metaphorically, in a shining armor of truth, and wielding an equally luminous sword of righteousness, Tom Hanks as attorney James Donovan is the embodiment of American virtue, right down to the meat loaf he has for dinner, the which is not touched until he has said grace with his wife and three kids. There was, no… Read More »
AMERICAN ULTRA
There is a bold sense of anarchy to AMERICAN ULTRA that is as unrepentant as it is unpredictable.
THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.
Having quaffed a drink laced with something that will shortly knock him cold, Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) does the sensible thing. He gathers some throw-pillows and carefully places first them, and then himself, upon the nearest sofa. Once, he explains to the person responsible for slipping him the mickey, he hit his head during the… Read More »
SPY
When I reviewed BRIDESMAIDS, I spent a great deal of my verbiage on Melissa McCarthy’s supporting performance. Rarely had I seen an actress, or actor for that matter, so fearless, so sure of him- or herself, and with such a preternatural gift for discovering humor in the most unexpected places. She was nominated for an… Read More »
FROM PARIS WITH LOVE
No one will mistake FROM PARIS WITH LOVE for a classic. The story is just so many set pieces that hang together by the most delicate of gossamer threads. Yet, they are set pieces that show off the best of stars John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, while allowing director Pierrel Morel to indulge in… Read More »
THE COLD LIGHT OF DAY
There is one overwhelming question about THE COLD LIGHT OF DAY. Why isn’t this a better flick? It certainly has all the right elements. The cast, led by Henry Cavill and Sigourney Weaver, are solidly committed. The story is the kind that Hitchcock loved. An innocent man plunged into a life-and-death situation not of his… Read More »
A MOST WANTED MAN
A MOST WANTED MAN evokes the best of the Cold War thrillers of the 1960s. Hardly a surprise, considering its based on a novel by the master of that genre, John le Carre. Directed with that genres same sense of understated, but lethal, suspense borne of uncertainty by Anton Corbijn it updates the action from… Read More »