A movie whose title is its own review. Feel-good has seldom felt better -- especially during the many songs that always seem to stop too soon. The story is set in college, but the dynamics are more high school: cliques, acceptance, young love, raging hormones (and bowels). The girl meets-loses-gets-back-boy plot is as well worn … Continue reading PITCH PERFECT

Long, complicated and confusing in the manner of INCEPTION and MEMENTO.  It begins as a noir-style hit man drama enhanced by time travel, then throws a curve ball about halfway in with a telekinetic twist involving an OMEN-esque kid, and ties them both together at the end after a spate of noisy firepower. As the … Continue reading LOOPER

For anyone who saw the completely horrible "Judge Dredd" (doesn't deserve our usual capital letters), it is understandable that you would wonder why they would remake it. But maybe that's exactly why they should have. To get it right. And that's precisely what the filmmakers have done, get it totally right! This is taking a … Continue reading DREDD 3D

The whole time-travel thing has been done to death. TIME AFTER TIME one of the best. STAR TREK at times seemed obsessed with it to the point of distraction, causing fans to hold their heads in pain trying to figure out timelines, temporal causality loops, etc. But time travel as a hit man's tool? Now … Continue reading LOOPER

An entertaining damsel in distress thriller graced by two fine actors as the damsel and her (maybe) nemesis. Jennifer Lawrence is on a roll these days, and here, her inherent toughness makes her more than just a girl in danger. With many of these kind of thrillers, the don't-go-in-the-basement factor brings giggles when pretty protagonists … Continue reading HOUSE AT THE END OF THE STREET

Once again, as he did in PERCY JACKSON and the 3:10 TO YUMA remake, Logan Lerman takes sub-par material and makes it watchable. A Hughesian retread of garden variety teen angst, dime store homophobia and glossed-over mental illness, this movie cuts more corners than a kirigami artist, with crisis resolutions that come about so easily, … Continue reading THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER

The What-the-fuck-? factor is lower here than PUNCH DRUNK LOVE but higher than THERE WILL BE BLOOD -- with the stipulation that WTF is not necessarily a bad thing. Take the opening sequence, where sailors out of a Paul Cadmus painting or an Athletic Model Guild fantasy idle on what's presumably a South Pacific beach … Continue reading THE MASTER

This plays like the sequel to BRIDESMAIDS. It's not quite a rip-off, but not quite as good, either. New cast, similar types, right down to the rising star chubby girl (in this case, Rebel Wilson). Kirsten Dunst seems to be going the Gwyneth Paltrow route: old beyond her years. Dunst is almost matronly here, oddly … Continue reading BACHELORETTE

Question: does a successful franchise have the "right" to change its signature style and still market itself under its original name? Obviously, whoever owns the copyright can do as they damn well please. But it can be a jolt to the expectations. A quarter of the way into [REC]3, the hand-held verite filmmaking that characterized … Continue reading [REC]3 GENESIS

When the centerpiece song of your parody revue is titled, "If I Could Smell Your Cunt"… when the show has a Greek chorus -- of lambs… when Dr. Hannibal Lecter is played and sung by one of Broadway's best-known belters (Davis Gaines)… when the role of Clarice Starling is done by an actress (Christine Lakin) … Continue reading SILENCE! THE MUSICAL