• “Asteroid City” is a visual feat of a movie with little in the way of substance, in fact, this might be the most contrived Wes Anderson film I've watched. Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Liev Schreiber and Adrien Brody star in it, which adds heft but the photography is helliciously rendered in saturated pastels and so it's weird.

    This film brought a sense of emptiness in me. During its two hours’ running time

  • It’s the oldest story in the book: boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy and girl live happily ever after.

    The problem? The girl in this instance is a computer, and the boy is the lonely Theodore Twombley (Joaquin Phoenix). Theodore, who spends his days composing love letters for other people, is slogging through the aftermath of a failed marriage when he purchases an artificially intelligent operating system. His drab life, backlit by a vaguely

  • “The Avengers” is the smorgasbord comic book movie we’ve been […]

  • Comic book mavens rejoice, for Marvel Studios has concocted a heady and wonderful sensory brew in “The Avengers.” Weaving together the origin stories of Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, and Captain America, “The Avengers” packages a star-studded cast, one that could easily have imploded under its own weight, into a fleet-footed, yet cohesive, plotline. Nefarious forces from other worlds threaten Earth, led by the sneering and magnetic trickster god

  • So, We Bought a Zoo is based on a true story about a single parent who brought his family back together again by buying a zoo--stop laughing. Did I mention it’s directed by Cameron Crowe (Almost Famous, Jerry Maguire), stars Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson, and features an impressive musical score by Sigur Rós frontman Jónsi Birgisson? But then again, that storyline…hm, keep it up, you’ll need laughter to get through this schmaltzy dreck.

  • Woody Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona runs from promising to intriguing to agreeably incoherent to disagreeably incoherent to utter anarchy.

    A little frustrating as film, yes, but one might say it successfully mirrors the pathway of romance. It certainly mirrors the pathway of the volcanic marriage of artists Maria and Juan Antonio (Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem), a disturbed, bickering couple for whom “shooting from the hip” can have uncomfortable meanings. The film traces the sensuous adventures of two American college grads Vicky and Christina (Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson) as they summer in Spain and become romantically entangled with the couple.