Recently, while wandering in Frost’s proverbial yellow woods, I came to a fork in the road and decided to take the one less traveled. After a half dozen years as a professional film critic writing about other people’s movies, I have decided it is time to start letting them write about mine. [read more]

Like the boy that shares its name, the Harry Potter series stumbled from the gate, saddled not entirely unexpectedly with inexperience and immaturity. But then, as with the boy, something truly wonderful—even magical—happened. It grew into something to be immensely, colossally, button-poppingly proud of. Unlike nearly every adaptation Hollywood produces, the Harry Potter films, taken individually or as a whole, are worthy—epically worthy—of their literary source material. [read more]

It is no secret that I disliked the first two Transformers films. In fact, I employ no hyperbole whatsoever in admitting that I, for lack of a more expressive word, utterly loathed them. There are those who claim Transformers: Dark of the Moon is light years better than its predecessors. Do not believe their rancid deceit. While director Michael Bay—who recently admitted the second film in the franchise was repugnant—has clearly learned some valuable lessons, they are not of a sufficient caliber to elevate the film out of the misogynistic, infantile and puerile sewer from whence it was first conceived. About the best that can be said for this dreadful piece of cinematic rubbish is that it is only slightly better than the second installment—and that was one of the worst reviewed films of 2009. [read more]

Several years ago, one of my dearest friends starred in a national CitiCard commercial in which a woman Feng shuis her house (the ancient Chinese system of aesthetics that teaches that greater spiritual energy can be derived from a proper orientation of your material belongings) but discovers that what she really needed to do was Feng shui her clueless husband. Larry Crowne is that commercial writ large, the story of a middle-aged man who, for reasons not entirely of his choosing, makes sweeping changes to his life. The film, directed, written and starring Tom Hanks, is, if one can compare the world of cinema to the world of your dining room table, neither dinner nor dessert, but rather the tasty and ultimately inconsequential appetizer you enjoy before moving on to the more substantive fare. [read more]

It was bound to happen. No one can keep a winning streak like that going forever. A 25-year perfect game isn’t exactly shabby. In fact, it just might be unprecedented. There is no other creative entity in Hollywood with as unblemished and sterling a record as Pixar. This makes the stumble that is Cars 2 both instantly forgivable and doubly lamentable. [read more]

When I was young, I accidentally punched a hole in the side of our garage wall with a wayward snow shovel. Terrified at the implications once my mother returned from work, I did the only thing I could think of: I taped a piece of notebook paper across the sizable gouge and painted over the whole thing. It looked fine for a while, but after a few months the paint began to crack, the paper began to disintegrate and both my initial accident and the ill-conceived cover-up were exposed. The Green Lantern takes the same approach to filmmaking, trying to compensate for a colossally awful story by throwing countless special effects at the viewer. There hasn’t been this much green (see how I did that?) screen since the Star Wars prequels. [read more]

Nostalgia is defined as “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.” One thing that is abundantly clear while watching Super 8 is that writer/director J.J. Abrams’ nostalgia for his early teenaged years—an era defined by the films of Steven Spielberg (also a producer here)—is shared by many of his audience members, including yours truly. The cinematic love letter—absolutely earnest, devoid of cynicism and refreshingly irony-free—manages to tap into a naive hope and adventurous optimism that the master himself, Spielberg, has, lamentably, abandoned in our post-9/11 world. Super 8 never veers into parody, but always manages, despite a series of late-in-the-game stumbles, to deliver superb action, comedy, coming-of-age pathos and just plain fun. Prepare to feel like a kid again. [read more]

In a summer unfortunately glutted with superhero movies, every one an origins story, X-Men: First Class not only eclipses its competition, but also each of its franchise predecessors. Psychologically complex, thematically rich and emotionally layered, this is the best, smartest and classiest of the X-Men series by leagues. This is a comic book movie that invites your brain to the theater along with your body. [read more]

Author’s Note: The following is less a standard film review and more a lengthy, deeply personal and impressionistic filmic examination.

When NASA launched the Voyager space probes in 1977, they housed golden records containing a variety of sounds—natural, animal, linguistic, musical—as well as photographs and scientific and mathematical schematics. Voyager’s contents were intended to be a snapshot of humanity for any intelligent extraterrestrial life that might happen to chance upon the message in a bottle launched on a cosmic sea. To that compilation, I would like to add The Tree of Life (winner of the Palme d’Or, the top prize at this year’s Cannes film festival), a peerless encapsulation of what it means to be Human, with all of our strengths and weaknesses, accomplishments and failings, scientific acumen and dogged superstitions. [read more]

Kung Fu Panda 2 is disappointing only because it is not the original Kung Fu Panda, a rare animated action-packed adventure that managed to delight adult filmgoers as well as kids not by injecting sophisticated humor but by making a story of a fat Panda bear incontestably exciting. The second entry in the trilogy (this one ends with a unabashed plug for a third film) is not bad. It’s just uninspired and lacks that special something that pushed the first film over the top and showed that Dreamworks could make a great animated film if it actually tried (it would take How to Train Your Dragon to make that fact incontrovertible). [read more]

To dispense with a lengthy plot synopsis for The Hangover: Part II would be a profound waste of the time it would take me to write it and you to read it. The Hangover: Part II is the exact same movie as its predecessor down to nearly every single narrative beat. While there’s certainly something to be said for not reinventing the wheel on the most successful R-rated comedy of all time, this is not a case of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery—it is indolent narcissism of the most nauseating kind. [read more]