It started with "The Ring" in 2004 but now with the new movie "Sinister," in which a ghost haunts reels of old home movies, the poltergeists are putting more of a curse on film than 3-D. Writer-director Scott Derrickson, no stranger to the horror genre after dealing with demons in "The Exorcism of Emily Rose," tries his hardest to create a mood and some jump-out-of-your-skin scares but this new haunting is a far

It was a little surprising to me that Tim Burton had never made a boy-and-his-dog story before, so much so, in fact, that I looked this up only to find that he had made “Frankenweenie” in 1984 as a live-action short film. Twenty-eight years later and you can tell that this story, now in animated form, is still a passion project. Victor (Charlie Tahan) is a lanky, dark-haired high-school loner who prefers making 8mm movies and working on

After “Battlefield Earth” who would've thought that scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard would ever be portrayed seriously in film again? “The Master,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s first film since 2007’s “There Will Be Blood”, does just that. It neither condemns nor justifies the religion, but centers on the fascinating struggle of two men. Joaquin Phoenix’s faux mental breakdown is over, thankfully, and he has returned to acting in

“Dredd 3D” is a meat grinder of a flick that assaults the audience’s sensory organs with wave after wave of mayhem, death and gratuitousness. This is a movie that aspires to the ne plus ultra of rated R, possessing qualities that will surely enshrine it as a cult favorite but damn it for those who want more than full-fledged viscerality. Forget the Stallone version from 1995: “Dredd 3D” is the true heir to its comic book source. Judge

In 2005 writer-director Rian Johnson made a memorable film called “Brick” which combined the private eye-crime noir genre with a high-school setting and made us start to wonder if Joseph Gordon Levitt was going to have a career past being the alien teenager on “3rd Rock from the Sun.” Now no one is wondering anymore as Levitt teams up again with the director for “Looper,” the year’s most ingenious and thought-provoking

Whatever happened to misbegotten youth? Don’t you long for the old days, when young misfits were French, ran everywhere and stole things? What happened to the old days, when a good American movie character could look forward to a life of crime on screen? Nowadays they take medication. And moan about not being popular. And make mix tapes and try to get people to feel sorry for them. Has American youth taken a turn for the

Writer-director David Ayer really likes cop-themed movies. He’s done all kinds of them, from frivolous fun ones ("S.W.A.T") to police corruption (“Street Kings,” “Dark Blue,” “Training Day”) ones. These have all been riveting in their own way and “End of Watch” is no exception, but this is fairly new territory in that it breaks down the brotherhood of cops. Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena play Brian and Mike, South