'The Amazing Spider-Man 2' review: 'Professionally mediocre' sequel is 'loud, dull, and, forced' (image: Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man in 'The Amazing Spider-Man 2') Part of the appeal of Spider-Man, in all his paper and celluloid incarnations, is the character's recognizably human scale. Neither a trillionaire industrialist (Batman), a Norse God […]

Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock in The Heat Sandra Bullock The Heat: Bullock's biggest opening weekend at domestic box office? July 1, '13, update: Starring Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy, Paul Feig's buddy comedy The Heat opened with a remarkable – and better than initially expected – $39.11 million at […]

The Hobbit with the Gollum a.k.a. Andy Serkis. Starring Martin Freeman as the young Bilbo Baggins, Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – the first installment in the cinematic trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien's (not all that long) 1937 novel The Hobbit – is both a domestic blockbuster and […]

Django Unchained trailer with Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx Django Unchained trailer is out. Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino of Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds fame, Django Unchained is set two years before the Civil War. Jamie Foxx, in a career comeback following his Best Actor Oscar win nearly 8 […]

Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles, Ray Taylor Hackford's prosaic biopic Ray offers no more than a superficial look at the life and career of legendary singer and composer Ray Charles. I say “superficial” in that Ray may show Charles' stand against racism, in addition to his many women and drug […]

Directed by F. Gary Gray and written by Kurt Wimmer, the crime thriller Law Abiding Citizen stars Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx as two men on the opposite sides of law. It's just unclear who's actually on the right side: the district attorney (Foxx) who agreed on a plea bargain […]

'Where the Wild Things Are.' Oct. 18, '09, update: Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are easily defeated its competition at the North American box office this weekend with a solid $32.4 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday. The big-screen adaptation of Maurice Sendak's beloved book scored […]

Oct. 28 Saw IV stormed to the top of the North American box office this weekend with an estimated US$32.1 million. Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, the fourth installment in the popular Saw series opened at 3,183 theaters on Friday, slightly surpassing the $31.7 million opening gross of Saw II. […]

The 2005 London Film Critics' Circle Award winners were announced on Feb. 9. Best Film The Aviator - Martin Scorsese The Motorcycle Diaries - Walter Salles Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Michel Gondry House of Flying Daggers - Zhang Yimou * Sideways - Alexander Payne Best British Film Ae […]

A Very Long Engagement with Audrey Tautou: BAFTA casualty. This year, several top awards season contenders have had their British Academy Award (BAFTA) chances shortcircuited by new rules and a dearth of screenings & screeners. One of these is Jean-Pierre Jeunet's sweeping World War I drama A Very Long Engagement, which […]

Award-winning movies: Million Dollar Baby with Hilary Swank. A critical favorite and one of the top award-winning movies this season, the National Society of Film Critics' Best Film of 2004 is Clint Eastwood's sentimental melo Million Dollar Baby, which Paul Haggis adapted from a short story by F.X. Toole (a.k.a. Jerry Boyd). […]

Wine country road movie Sideways with Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church. Alexander Payne's Sideways, this year's awards season favorite among North American film critics, chronicles the belated coming of age of two middle-aged men stuck in an adolescent frame of mind. A few glasses of Merlot, a couple of […]

Johnny Depp family movie Finding Neverland. Directed by Marc Forster, and starring Johnny Depp as Peter Pan creator J.M. Barrie and Kate Winslet as Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, the audience-friendly, truth-distorting period piece Finding Neverland was the National Board of Review Awards' Best Film winner. Making his screenwriting debut, David Magee […]