If time really is money, then the Justin Timberlake vehicle “In Time” is an Occupy Wall Street manifesto costumed for Halloween as a Bonnie and Clyde type thriller. Like the Occupy movement, it packs a lot of punch and a lot of passion, but doesn’t have an underlying rationality. In a vaguely futuristic, dystopian world, time has replaced money as currency. People have been genetically coded to stop aging at 25. They retain their youthful looks, but their internal clock... Read more
Let the boys have their Sandlots, Ducks, and Bad News Bears. The new G-rated family movie “The Mighty Macs” takes the familiar genre of sports stories for kids and gives it a new focus: girls playing and a woman coaching. While it has some fine moments, the movie based on a real life college championship basketball coach named Cathy Rush turns out to be more of a near-miss rimshot than a nothing-but-net from the three point line. (more…) Read more
Few movies have penetrated my soul like “The Tree of Life,” Terrence Malick’s impressionistic love song to life, the universe, and everything that comes out on DVD this week. The fragmentary film follows a middle aged man (Sean Penn) as he remembers his brother, killed years ago at 19, and reflects on his relationship with God and his own brokenness. Many of his mental memories of spirituality were influenced by his Mother (Jessica Chastain), angelic in memory, and his hard... Read more
Had enough campaigning yet? Apparently, actor and activist George Clooney thinks you need more because he has made “Ides of March,” an intense, well-made story set in the high-stakes world of presidential primary elections. Delving the minutia of campaign life and the evolution of idealism to hypocrisy, the deeply cynical story profiles a young man and an older candidate who enter politics on a mission to better the world but end up selling their souls. (more…) Read more
Sam Childers, the subject of the new movie “Machine Gun Preacher,” doesn’t exactly fit in at the swanky Georgetown hotel in which we had our interview. Clad in black leather, sporting biker mustache, and gnawing on a toothpick, he looked like an extra from the biker drama “Sons of Anarchy,” only tougher. Despite his appearance, however, he wouldn’t necessarily fit in at your neighborhood biker bar either because his talk centers on Biblical passages and God’s requirements of His people.... Read more
When Charles Martin Smith was hired as director of the new movie “Dolphin Tale,” he immediately flew to Florida to visit Winter the dolphin, an ocean rescue who lost her tail and was fitted with a prosthetic by her human family. The scene he saw there would set the tone for the entire movie. “There was this kid about six who had lost a leg to cancer; he had been going through intense treatment. His mother had brought him there... Read more
Sadly, this movie focuses Kate on her adult concerns and misses the magic of the merry-go-round. Read more
The story of a workaholic who suffers a crisis at home only to realize the value of family is a staple in Hollywood, best seen in examples like the underrated 2000 “The Family Man.” Sarah Jessica Parker attempts to update this story by telling it from the mother’s perspective in “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” but the movie dishes up tired humor and little insight with a subject that, in better hands, would hit home for most women.... Read more
Do you have your plan for When It All Goes Down? Whatever the scenario – nuclear holocaust, zombie attack, Russian invasion as in “Red Dawn” – there’s a group of us that have it figured out. Forage for food. Rustle up some horses when the gas runs out. Find ammo. Learn to farm. Above all, survive. We’ve got a thing for the apocalypse. This is why the medical worst-case scenario movie “Contagion,” opening September 9, is so fun yet creepy... Read more
It all adds up to an excellent movie, one that deserves the moniker “epic.” Read more
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