Film + TV

The Impossible, directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, follows Maria (Naomi Watts), Henry (Ewan McGregor) and their three sons as they arrive at a Thailand resort in time for Christmas 2004, just as the disastrous tsunami hit. This isn’t a movie about the larger effects of the tsunami, but a very insular tale about beating the […]

The saw blades match the thrills in blunt rustiness throughout the uneven, but not entirely awful, Texas Chainsaw 3D. Positioned as a direct sequel to Tobe Hooper’s gritty 1974 original (and thus ignoring several other sequels and remakes), TC:3D picks up decades after Leatherface’s first bloody rampage as yet another group of sweaty twenty-somethings wind […]

The labyrinthian novel turned Broadway spectacle remade into Hollywood award-bait lives up to the greatest of expectations in Les Miserables. Hugh Jackman gives it his all as upwardly mobile French convict Jean Valjean, who avoids the law and tries to make peace with god while raising an orphan child in dangerous French times. Director Tom […]

The story of two bounty hunters, an ex-slave named Django (Jamie Foxx) and the German Dr. Schultz (Christoph Waltz), Django Unchained is not for those with weak stomachs. In classic Quentin Tarantino fashion, Django marries heavy gore with his encyclopedic cinematic knowledge—in this case, of Spaghetti Westerns. A search for Django’s wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), […]

Tom Cruise is the best at everything except acting as Jack Reacher, in the new crime thriller Jack Reacher. Casting megastar Cruise as a brilliant ex-army super cop with skills rivalling Batman isn’t the worst idea. But the inflexible Cruise plays his titular role with a shoulder shrugging boredom that sucks the energy from his […]

Entirely disposable, The Guilt Trip takes a couple of fine actors down the road of least success. Floundering salesman Seth Rogen just found out he’s named after his doting, single mother’s long lost love. So he invites mom along on his cross-country sales trip in hopes of getting her a date. Both leads are punching […]

Judd Apatow strays too far into sentimentality in This is 40, a comedy about entering your forties married with two kids. Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann, Apatow’s wife—characters from Apatow’s last feature, Knocked Up—are hitting a midlife crisis, questioning their relationship, stressing over their kids, Sadie and Charlotte (Maude and Iris Apatow) and […]

Cirque du Soleil is a spectacle that doesn’t quite translate to the big screen. Worlds Away, directed by Andrew Adamson and produced by James Cameron, tells the story of a girl who falls for an aerialist—before they can be together, they venture through an odyssey of circus worlds. Cirque du Soleil is impressive, stretching the […]

Making its debut on Blu-Ray in an extras-packed special edition, 1986’s Little Shop of Horrors has never looked, or sounded, better. The goofy, grisly musical comedy about a boy (Rick Moranis), a girl (Ellen Greene) and a hungry, homicidal houseplant is filled with hilarious cameos (like Bill Murray’s masochistic nutjob) and memorable musical numbers (Steve […]

If you were worried that Hobo with a Shotgun director Jason Eisener was in danger of losing his edge any time soon, please consider this unused first idea for his contribution to the alphabet-inspired anthology horror film The ABCs Of Death: “We originally picked the letter N because we wanted to do something with nunchucks,” […]

This tepid biopic by Sacha Gervasi chronicles the pre-production and filming of Psycho, a movie that was controversial in its making (in an era when a cross-dressing serial killer wasn’t your standard protagonist). Anthony Hopkins dons a fat suit and puts on his best jowly pout, remaining a caricature of Alfred Hitchcock. It’s the Mrs.—Helen […]