REVIEW: ‘Big Bad Wolves’ ★★ 1/2
The new year has barely begun, but we'll be hard pressed to find a movie as disturbing, on many levels, as the darkly comic Israeli thriller "Big Bad Wolves." It's...
All Stories
Story of People’s Princess, ‘Diana,’ may sell better over here ★★ 1/2
There's a myopia to "Diana," the new film about the divorce and last great romance of Princess Diana's life, that fits its subject like one of Diana's signature, custom-tailored gowns....
Turkeys star in no-fun ‘toon, ‘Free Birds’ ★ 1/2
"Free Birds" is more proof, as if 2013 needed it, that Hollywood has almost killed the animated goose that laid the golden egg. No matter that in this case the...
‘Mandy’ finally arrives– and it disappoints ★ 1/2
Abandoned but never quite forgotten, "All the Boys Love Mandy Lane" finally reaches theaters seven years after it was finished. A graphically violent, sexually explicit teen horror tale, it was...
Dysfunctional family funnier on the fringes in ‘A.C.O.D.’ ★★ 1/2
Melissa and Hugh divorced decades ago, but the heat never left their hate. They still go at it, hammer and tong, voices shrieking, threats rising and profanity flying. And they're...
‘Defeat’ has a cast with obvious winners ★★ 1/2
"The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete" is a rough-around-the-edges tale of children growing up on the mean streets of the wrong side of Brooklyn. It's a coming-of-age story of...
Creature feature that has a touch of blarney
Here's an old-fashioned "creature feature" in the mold of "The Thing," "Critters" and "Gremlin," with a little something extra. Yes, this time the beast comes ashore in an island town...
‘The Purge’: Morality tale binges on violence and plot lapses ★ 1/2
James DeMonaco's "The Purge" is a bloody-minded, heavy-handed satire of life within these violent United States. It's a horror film with the occasional visceral thrill — the fear of being...
‘Violet and Daisy’ sugarcoats a pair of young killers for hire ★★ 1/2
"Violet & Daisy" plays like a live-action version of a Japanese manga comic. Lurid and bloody, it has elaborate gunplay and kinky-kitschy, lollipop-sucking schoolgirls working as assassins to pay for...
‘Violet and Daisy’ sugarcoats a pair of young killers for hire ★★ 1/2
"Violet & Daisy" plays like a live-action version of a Japanese manga comic. Lurid and bloody, it has elaborate gunplay and kinky-kitschy, lollipop-sucking schoolgirls working as assassins to pay for...