So who’s ready for another nine plus hours of hobbits, dwarves, orcs, elves, and Gandalf? Honestly the way director Peter Jackson, taking his fourth trip to Middle Earth, has worked this first of “The Hobbit” trilogy; it will feel like it’s going by in a flash. I’m so impressed with what he’s done here; proving again that nobody could do a better job of bringing J.R.R Tolkien’s stories to the screen quite like him. This one starts with the dwarves

Ken Burns's documentary “The Central Park 5” (it was co-directed with Sarah Burns and David McMahon) begins with the recounting of the rape of a jogger in the park during April of 1989, the trigger event of a woefully tragic story. Working with his daughter and son-in-law, Burns has created a nearly flawless film about the cracks in our criminal justice system, zeroing in on the “us vs. them” mentality that became

Better movies are coming in the next couple of weeks, is what I kept repeating to myself as I sat through “Deadfall," an incredibly average thriller about people with father issues. Eric Bana and Olivia Wilde play Addison and Liza, two siblings who forged a very deep bond with one another during their young years when they’re alcoholic father put them through hell. Now they’re casino robbers on the run in the blizzard-laden count-

“Hyde Park on Hudson” wastes no time in letting us know it’s a prestige project. This is a film that takes place in a beautiful location (the New York estate of Franklin Roosevelt’s mother with its sunny view of nature, including a driving path among the flowers), has Laura Linney, as Roosevelt’s cousin Daisy, constantly butt into the film with a pretentious voiceover narration letting us know how important everything is, and has

A romantic comedy may feel like a strange new direction for director David O. Russell (“I Heart Huckabees,” “The Fighter") but his adaptation of Matthew Quick’s namesake novel is a winner, serving up equal parts romance and uplifting drama. What of Bradley Cooper 2.0? He plays a demanding role to perfection. His Pat Solatino, a bipolar Philadelphia man who spent eight months in a psych ward after a brutal beating put on

“Killing them Softly” is an expression I never understood but I'll guess that if one needed to kill softly, Brad Pitt’s Jackie would be the right man for the job. “Softly,” writer-director Andrew Dominik’s adaptation of the George V. Higgins novel “Cogan’s Trade," (itself a follow-up to “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford") is the Weinstein Company contender for an Academy Award this year. It’s not going to

“Men in Black 3” is a paycheck movie for everyone […]