Robert Downey Junior has to be one of the most charismatic and likable actors working in Hollywood. That’s why, in The Judge, it’s easy not to despise his character, Hank Palmer. Give this same role to a unknown actor, and no way would we root for this guy to come out on top. Hank Palmer is a flashy, conceited Chicago lawyer who acts like he’s got it all figured out, but his marriage is falling apart. When his mother dies and he returns home for her funeral, his father (Robert Duvall) is arrested for murder. Hank feels he has no choice but to stay in Indiana to represent his... Read More

First of all, let me say how hard it will be to review this movie without spoilers, since it’s a plot-twist-apalooza spoiler minefield. But here we go: Nick and Amy Dunne live in suburban Missouri, a couple settled in to mid-marriage unhappiness. Their lives haven’t turned out the way they predicted, but things are about to flip upside down when Nick comes home to a ransacked house, and the police investigation into Amy’s disappearance begins. I can’t say more without spoiling too much, so I’ll cut the synopsis there. Read More  Read More

The Skeleton Twins is an iceberg. Hold on, lemme explain. A good movie doesn’t throw buckets of information at you right away, drowning you in exposition. A good movie inserts just the right amount of mystery, which creates tension, which leaves you intrigued. You watch intently because you need to have your questions answered. The Skeleton Twins does just that. It plays like snippets of a much larger story, with a rich history that we’re only meant to guess at as the movie unfolds. Little bits of info surface at key moments, but the majority remains left unsaid. That brand... Read More

The Maze Runner: Teenagers in Trouble This weekend, I had a choice between Maze Runner and A Walk Among The Tombstones, a gritty thriller in which Liam Neeson reprises his role from Taken plays a new, totally non-Taken character. I chose the Maze Runner, and this is my story. My favorite part of the evening may have been the trailer for Interstellar, the Christopher Nolan/Matthew McConaughey Oscar-bait film coming out later this year. Man, that looks exciting. I can’t wait to hear the time-is-a-flat-circle-in-space monologue. Read More  Read More

Bob Saginowski doesn’t take communion. Bob tends bar, but some Brooklyn gangsters also use the bar as a funnel for drops… places they temporarily store ill-gotten money before stashing it somewhere else. But Bob doesn’t think he’s connected to that underground world; he thinks he’s left it far behind.   Just as he did in the woefully under-appreciated movie Warrior, Tom Hardy once again shows how adept he is at characterizing a range of emotion through a subtle performance. His lips barely move for most of the film, but we can read his face and feel the... Read More