Compiling a decade’s best list is a profoundly intimidating affair. Some films, especially the first handful, come instantly. They are as immovable as granite, as strong today as when they first appeared. But things get more complicated the further down the list you go. Some assume that one would simply review one’s Best Of lists [...]

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This may be the personally oddest and most eclectic “Best Of” list I’ve ever compiled. Half is strongly art-house and indie minded, while the other half is not simply mainstream, it is firmly entrenched in solid blockbuster territory. How to explain it? Simple. These were my favorite films of the year. These were the ones [...]

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I walked into Sherlock Holmes more than a little anxious. As a longtime fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famed detective and a voracious reader of his exploits, I was concerned that director Guy Ritchie (Snatch, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) was going to transform the beloved literary icon into little more than a [...]

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A Single Man is a lavish and romantic examination of interrupted love, a chronicle of life and loss and everything that binds it together. Its mood is its truth and its imagery is all the narrative we need. It is one of the most beautiful things you will set eyes on all year.

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Expecting the nutritional value of Christmas cotton candy, I instead left It’s Complicated convinced I’d seen the smartest, most insightful, funniest romantic comedy since When Harry was in Seattle. Or was it When Sally was Sleepless? Either way, It’s Complicated is the most enjoyable present you’re bound to find beneath your tree this holiday season.

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In my review of Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of a Geisha, I stated that the director had all the subtly of the Las Vegas Strip. What was meant as a disparaging condemnation for that film is actually a positive asset for his latest undertaking. When it comes to big, show-stopping musicals like Nine, I frankly want [...]

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Early in James Cameron’s new film Avatar (his first since 1997’s Titanic), a character utters the line, “You should see your faces!” as her aircraft navigates a vista of astonishing splendor. Without a doubt, Cameron was thinking of more than just the occupants of the on-screen transport when he wrote that line. He was speaking [...]

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The Young Victoria is a simple story sumptuously told. What it lacks in intrigue and excitement, it makes up for in elegance and opulence. Its goal, quite simply, is to capture the human side of Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, and it feels like truculent nit picking when The Young Victoria manages to do so much with [...]

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This review originally ran at Christianity Today Movies.
The sexual melodrama Broken Embraces is like an onion. But while it can be an enjoyable and even rewarding exercise peeling back all of Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar’s many layers, there still needs to be something edible when you’re through. Broken Embraces is, instead, a cornucopia of [...]

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This review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here.
There is only one word needed to sum up Invictus — underwhelming. While the historically significant story is certainly worthy of a film adaptation, Invictus is little more than a clichéd sports drama, and a rather stale [...]

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