Hillary Titley

The long delays The Wolfman survived have left the film with an air of mystique: Why the wait? Was there cut material? Why bother now? The finished product hints at possible compromises and shortcuts, but is an otherwise solid and entertaining B-picture. Benicio Del Toro plays Lawrence Talbot, the prodigal son of Anthony Hopkins’ mysterious […]

Young Percy Jackson discovers his father is Poseidon and is enlisted to recover Zeus’ lightning bolt. Writer Craig Titley adapted the script from the first book of Rick Riordan’s Greek myth-inspired series for younger readers. (No relation that I’m aware of, but I mention it to counter speculation once levelled at me by a commenter […]

Unforeseen and surprising third-act twists don’t make up for two initial acts of calculated Hollywood romance gobbledy gook in Gary Marshall’s interconnected-character love blowout. Valentine’s Day is romantic comedy flypaper: throw up enough well-trod plot lines, re-dressed love platitudes and fresh, topical spins on classic archetypes and some of it will seem genuine. Between this […]

Sometimes you never know what elements of a film will inform the review. My enjoyment of From Paris With Love is almost in spite of its contents, in which John Travolta, who looks more like an outlaw biker than a CIA operative, schools a type-A neophyte spy played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. The violence is indiscriminate, the morality is […]

Even with the marriage-plot inversion of a woman (Amy Adams) proposing to her boyfriend (Adam Scott) on Leap Day (February 29, the only day women are allowed to do this), Leap Year‘s plot wheels still need a remarkable base level of stupidity to keep them turning. Leap Year portrays Ireland as being in a state […]

Jackie Chan is probably too old to once again break every bone in his body, so you can’t blame him for dialing down the scope gravitas of his action exploits. In The Spy Next Door, Chan, who is put in charge of Amber Valetta’s brood of moody, shrill brats when plot contrivances spirit her away, […]

Without this film actually being worthy of a recommendation, Tooth Fairy’s key theme coalesced with another, more seismic pop cultural event last weekend: the end of Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show. Unusual for a family film, Dwayne Johnson’s Tooth Fairy adds significant depth to its “believe in your dreams” platitude, with the implication that to do so requires […]

When god turns his/her (oh, it’s not worth getting into) back on humankind and sends a swarm of zombie-angels (Zangels?) to wipe it out, one man-angel-warrior (M-ang-orrior? played by Paul Bettany) takes matters into his own hands and bands with a renegade group of humans holed up in an isolated diner, fighting for their lives […]

High-concept romantic comedies are in vogue right now: Films like When in Rome and Leap Year hinge on contrived, asinine notions rather than the simple satisfaction of two interesting, likable people falling in love. Kristen Bell plucks coins from an ornate Roman fountain and soon has the coins’ owners employing Terminator-like tactics to win her […]

What makes a movie land with a feather’s touch is a quality that is hard to pin down, but what makes lesser movies land with a thud is always glaringly apparent. Dear John—where star-crossed lovers John Tyree (Channing Tatum), a soldier in the US Army circa September 11 and its aftermath, and Savannah Curtis (Amanda […]

Fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) is murdered by the serial killer next door (Stanley Tucci), and watches from her fantastical heaven as her family (Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz) falls to pieces and police bungle the investigation. Director Peter Jackson obsesses over the awe of Susie’s afterlife but never considers how it could better illustrate […]

John Crowley (Brendan Fraser) goes out on a limb to discover a miracle cure for his children suffering from Pompe, a rare and usually fatal genetic disease, by recruiting a brutish scientist, (Harrison Ford), and creating his own biotech firm devoted to manufacturing the necessary drugs. Though this brings up interesting issues about the fussy […]