Looper (2012)
[8] Looper is a mash-up of mobster movie and sci-fi time travel flick, but rather than getting caught up in its own clever twists on a (let's face it) hackneyed sci-fi sub-genre, the movie is wisely more concerned with creating…
Skyfall (2012)
[8] It's so refreshing to watch heroes and villains who are over the age of 40. Skyfall repeatedly suggests that sometimes older is better, and I couldn't agree more. Daniel Craig's third turn as James Bond is at least as…
Barry Munday (2010)
[5] A womanizer (Patrick Wilson in the title role) loses his testicles right before being slapped with a paternity suit in this soft comedy. Seeing his situation as his last chance at fatherhood, Barry gets to know his baby mama…
The Way Back (2010)
[6] There's no director I admire more than Peter Weir (Fearless, Mosquito Coast), even if his latest film left me a tad underwhelmed. The Way Back is about a group of men who escape a Russian labor camp during WWII…
30 Minutes or Less (2011)
[5] Working from a stale script that comes too late in the Tarantino wake, this dark, violent 'who's conning who' comedy is made tolerable by its flavor-of-the-week casting. If you like Jesse Eisenberg, Danny McBride, and Aziz Ansari (like I…
Admission (2013)
[5] A Princeton admissions clerk takes a chance on an 'alternative school' kid when she discovers he may be the child she gave up for adoption many years ago. Despite the intrinsic charm of both Tina Fey and Paul Rudd,…
Dinner for Schmucks (2010)
[5] A business man (Paul Rudd) is invited to a clandestine 'dinner with idiots' in which he's encouraged to bring the weirdest, most bizarre guest he can find for the rest of the business partners to gawk. Everyone brings a…
Kaboom (2010)
[4] Queer cinema pioneer Gregg Araki (The Living End, Mysterious Skin) serves up a brightly colored teen sex comedy by way of Twin Peaks with a Dr. Strangelove finale. Like most of Araki's films, there are nice scenes here and…
Unstoppable (2010)
[7] An unmanned train is going to crash in a highly populated area unless a conductor and an engineer can stop it. It may be Speed on a train, but as action flicks go, it's still pretty entertaining. Scenes with…
Evil Dead (2013)
[7] As much as I hate remakes on the whole, this new Evil Dead movie greatly surprised me with how well made it is and how genuinely scary and tense it is. It also avoids contemporary horror pitfalls -- the…