Green Zone

Mass Distraction: Hollywood-washed Green Zone refuses to name actual villains.

Spoiler alert! Jason Bourne does not find the WMDs in Iraq. Sorry to ruin Green Zone for you, but surely already CNN did that years ago ...

Logorama: City Weekly Won an Oscar!

All right, not exactly. But among the many corporate insignias found in the Best Animated Short winner Logorama ...

Oscar Obscurities 2010

The other Academy Awards.

Last year, noting that there wasn’t much drama in the major categories, I offered picks in five of the more obscure Oscar categories ...

Cop Out

Sell Out: Cop Out is a cheap betrayal of Kevin Smith and his fans.

Shame on Silent Bob. I realize that times are tough and everyone’s gotta make a living, and that that’s probably why Kevin Smith agreed to direct a big-budget studio buddy action comedy ...

Shutter Island

Crazy Like a Schlock: Scorsese is as crazy does in Shutter Island.

I kinda can’t believe that everyone involved in Shutter Island thought they could get away with this. Have they not seen the 943 other thriller-in-an-asylum movies?

The Wolfman

Untrue Grue: There’s no fog so thick that can conceal the emotional emptiness of The Wolfman.

The metallic tang of blood is all over the elegant facade of The Wolfman, a mysteriously disappointing remake of the classic 1941 Universal horror flick ...

Frozen

Skier'ed Shitless: Adam Green sustains the premise and the peril in Frozen.

There are really only two key questions for anyone crafting a “people trapped somewhere” thriller: 1. How plausible is it that they can’t get help?, and 2. How do you sustain the premise once the peril has been established?

Edge of Darkness

Grief Counseling: The sizzle over-cooks the steak in Edge of Darkness.

Perhaps the spate of “vengeful parent” thrillers over the past months—Taken, Law Abiding Citizen, the new Edge of Darkness—is a cinematic manifestation of our collective sense of helplessness ...

Extraordinary Measures

Lifetime Member: Don't bother to get off the couch for Extraordinary Measures.

The based-on-a-true-story debut release by CBS Films’ theatrical division looks exactly like something that would have showed up on CBS proper 30 years ago ...

A Single Man

Sad, Pretty Pictures: Tom Ford should have let the grim beauty of A Single Man speak for itself.

It’s a good thing first-time director Tom Ford—yes, the fashion designer—cast Colin Firth as the lead in A Single Man ...