2013 OCR Movies Archive Stories

In the movies' version of March Madness, Sam Raimi turns out to be a much better Tim Burton than Bryan Singer. Unlike "Giant Slayer" Singer, Sam's got a sense of humor. Taking on a prequel to the fairytale that frightened generations, Sam does scary. And does it well. "Oz the Great and Powerful" is a winning back-engineering of the Oz fa

Anne and Georges are elderly Parisians taking life's victory lap. Their child is grown and married. Pianists and piano teachers, they can attend concerts and listen to CDs of their famous former students. Their routines are set and comfortable. – he knows which books she likes and recommends them, she knows how he takes his eggs. A

Expensive spirits meet free spirits in "The Angel's Share." This beguiling tall tale centers on a young ex-thug in Glasgow with a rare, innate talent for sniffing single-malt whiskey and evaluating its flavor. Robbie (Paul Brannigan) is no Rob Roy, but he is heroically resilient, and he becomes the leader of a crew of colorful misfits.

For the latest bout of CGI debauchery, there's "G.I. Joe: Retaliation," a film that tries to combine the quickness of quadruple analog sticks with the gaudiness and weight of vintage video-arcade displays. Unless you're already amped up from hours at an Xbox, it's exhausting, not exhilarating. Non-initiates, take heed: "G.I. Joe" does no

"Gangster Squad" may be loosely based on the truth – the takedown of notorious Los Angeles crime lord Mickey Cohen 60 years ago – but it feels about as real as a mob-themed costume party. At least there's a certain sport in counting how many neo-noir clichés director Ruben Fleischer ("Zombieland," "30 Minutes or Less") can get

Iron Man reigns as the standard-bearer of Hollywood superheroes with a $175.3 million domestic opening weekend for his latest sequel and an overseas haul of a half-billion dollars in less than two weeks. According to studio estimates Sunday, "Iron Man 3" has raced to a worldwide total of $680.1 million. That includes $175.9 million in it

Full disclosure: A fire alarm disrupted my screening of the fact-based adventure film "Kon-Tiki" about 20 minutes into the film. The man who ran the screening assured reviewers that projectionists paused the film during the alarm. Here's what happened before the theater's alarm system went off: In 1947, the movie's hero, Norwegian explor

The Civil War saga "Lincoln" leads the Academy Awards with 12 nominations, including best picture, director for Steven Spielberg and acting honors for Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones. Also among the nine nominees for best picture Thursday: the old-age love story "Amour"; the Iran hostage thriller "Argo"; the independent

"Mama" breaks a lot of horror movie rules, right off the proverbial bat. It gives us a long back-story opening and brings up much more back story as the tale progresses. It over-explains. It reveals its supernatural menace, not just in glimpses, but full on, and early on. There's never any doubt that this might all be in somebody

The most authentic, moving parts of many fictional Holocaust movies, including "Schindler's List," often come at the end, when the filmmakers include real footage of survivors and their families. "No Place on Earth" is a documentary, not a feature film, but it scatters moments of similar whiplash power throughout its 84-minute running time.

"Oblivion" starts out as a last-man-on-earth film but soon becomes a game of "What's wrong with this picture?" By the time you know all the answers, you're wondering what went wrong with the movie. Although it looks spectacular and boasts some pungent ideas, the surprise-to-running-time ratio is out of whack. Tom Cruise acts more relaxed

If you ever yearned for a Three Stooges movie that played bone-crunching slapstick for real, you might enjoy Michael Bay's "Pain & Gain," a movie that tries to turn a torture chamber into a comedy club. Mark Wahlberg pumps himself up physically and histrionically to portray Danny Lugo, the leader of an unholy trio of Miami gym rats.

"The Place Beyond the Pines," a title suitable for the Brothers Grimm, is actually an English translation of the Mohawk name Schenectady, as in Schenectady, N.Y. Why does this unpretentious upstate town bring out the arrogance in American filmmakers? In 2008 independent film fans suffered through "Synecdoche, New York," with Philip Seymo

The movies based on the novels of Nicholas Sparks always emphasize the simple pleasures. A quiet locale, a leisurely stroll down the beach, a romance that doesn't begin in a bar and end in bed that same night. Those simple pleasures are in the forefront of "Safe Haven," another sweetly treacly tale from the "beach book" author who gave u

"The Irish are the blacks of Europe," went a line from Alan Parker's great Dublin soul film "The Commitments" (1991). Twenty-two years later we've got Wayne Blair's "The Sapphires," a ragged but ripping soul film about aborigine women of Australia caught up in the global tumult of 1968. It plays like an elating tribute to "The Commitment

"Something in the Air" is a splendid title for a one-of-a-kind film – a political mood movie that's more revelatory and exciting than almost any political melodrama. Set several years after the radical uproar of "May '68" swept through Europe, the movie depicts how rebel fervor affects a handful of adolescents who intend to be activists or

Mae West said "Too much of a good thing is wonderful," but "Star Trek Into Darkness" proves her wrong. Director J.J. Abrams' second adventure with the crew of the Starship Enterprise revolves around a bad guy who looks like a normal Starfleet agent but is superhuman in his powers and subhuman, or at least monstrous, in his willingness to

Based on the true story of a family swept away by the deadly 2004 tsunami that pummeled Southeast Asia, "The Impossible" is about as subtle as a wall of water. The depiction of the natural disaster itself, which killed 230,000 people, is visceral and horrifying. Director Juan Antonio Bayona has crafted an event that's impeccable

What if we told you that director Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror classic "The Shining" is NOT just a movie about a writer played by Jack Nicholson who goes insane after taking a job as a caretaker at an isolated resort hotel?Would you believe that it is a film that contains hundreds of subliminal images and secret messages? Would you buy t

The first time I saw Terrence Malick's "To the Wonder," the digital print wasn't formatted correctly, so all I saw in many shots was the bottom half of Ben Affleck's head. When I watched it again (just to be fair), I realized that it didn't make a huge difference, because most of the time we're just watching Affleck's back, anyway. He's always t

James McAvoy, Vincent Cassel and Rosario Dawson set off wild excitations in "Trance," Danny Boyle's ultra-tricky psychological thriller. They play partners-in-crime, lovers, deadly enemies – sometimes all at once. Even when the action goes into a death spiral they keep it tangy. They make you want to keep guessing even though they're almos

The shock of the nude and the shock of the new bring much-needed vitality to "Renoir," a voluptuous, under-dramatized account of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's heroic final phase. Set entirely on the French Riviera in 1915, it boasts one hypnotic element: the rapt gaze of Michel Bouquet's Renoir as he homes in on the unclothed Christa Theret (playing m

Apparently, there is an unwritten law in Hollywood that every new generation must have its own version of "The Great Gatsby." This generation will get its own "Gatsby" this weekend when Australian filmmaker Baz Luhrmann ("Moulin Rouge!") unveils his lavish 3D production with Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby, Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway

Who hasn't driven through the streets of Hollywood and fantasized about starring in a summer comic-book movie? It turns out that even Oscar-winning actors are not immune to the dream. Sir Ben Kingsley, who won an Academy Award in 1983 for "Gandhi" and was nominated three more times for "Bugsy," "Sexy Beast" and "House of Sand and

Young love, so sorely tested by vampirism and zombification in "Twilight" and "Warm Bodies," finds the road to romance sunnier in "Beautiful Creatures," in which two teens pair up even though one of them is a witch in training. The one-liners drawl from the lips of the South Carolina characters like Spanish moss dripping from the oaks in