Jack Reacher is an above-average crime thriller with an effortlessly beguiling performance from Tom Cruise. At times it lacks compelling motivation, or sophisticated action, but for what it lacks it aims to replace with a good helping of drama, mystery, and a high body count.

“Jack Reacher has the distinction of being little more than it initially appears to be: a clumsily condensed mystery/thriller novel made into a movie that offers little more than every other clumsily condensed mystery/thriller novel made into a movie.” —James Berardinelli

Storyline

An innocent-looking brute…

Les Misérables is bound to take the box office by storm, but it’s a musical. Are musicals allowed to do that? Under the right circumstances, such as in Tom Hooper’s film, they stand the chance to. I’m really looking forward to Hugh Jackman’s performance as Jean Valjean. Hugh describes the working relationship with Tom Hooper and more in this interview.

“He’s so bold. He just takes so many risks,“ Jackman says. ”You don’t win the Oscar and take on a movie musical. Movie musicals are the riskiest things in the world. Are you kidding me? So, singing live. Making it fully sung through.…

The most definitive opinion piece I’ve read comparing The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in these formats: HFR 3D, Standard 3D, and 2D:

So with all of this here’s the “Master Class” that I took away, and that Peter Jackson shared with every filmmaker out there that is willing to study these 3 versions of the same film:

1. Film is just as much about what you DON’T show the audience as with what you DO. Shallow depth of field, motion blur, lack of sharpness, and movement all help to create movie magic. If images are too sharp and you see too much detail…that’s not always a good thing. The…

Let me interrupt your day to tell you to WATCH THIS RIGHT NOW!

Seriously, it doesn’t matter how you’ve felt about the films of 2012, the editing of this filmography reel (by @genrocks on Twitter) is superb. It makes this editor just a little jealous.

I don’t know much about who this is, but well worth the watch.

Witless, unfocused, and arguably misogynistic as well as misandristic, Playing for Keeps is a dispiriting, lowest-common-denominator Hollywood rom-com.

It’s a wonder why decent actors get paired with fatuous productions, such as this one. If you care to know more about how poorly the film sells itself, then partake in the rest of my review.

“Dear Hollywood, Please make better movies. Thanks.” -Ron Kraus

I saw Ron’s comment on YouTube for the official release of Playing for Keeps’ trailer. And I want to parrot Ron. Hollywood, what were you thinking? Get it together.

Playing for…

10 years ago, Star Trek: Nemesis premiered with great expectations. It was being directed by veteran editor Stuart Baird, responsible for such films as Superman: The Movie, and it was written by arguably one of the most in-demand screenwriters of the day, John Logan, who was just coming off an Oscar win for Gladiator. Logan volunteered to write for Star Trek because he was such a big Next Generation fan. Nemesis featured a promising story by Rick Berman, Brent Spiner, and Logan that would reveal more about the history of the Romulan Star Empire. The entire main TNG crew of actors had…

Tim Burton’s Batman is a strange animal: too dark to be enjoyed as pure camp, and too absurd to be viewed as serious entertainment.

Discarding the outright goofiness of 1960s TV series, Burton takes a grimmer, gloomier approach to the Batman mythos. The result is both fantastically stylish and frustratingly hollow: a celebration of style over substance that dazzles the eye without ever engaging the mind or heart.

The Super

Batman won an Oscar for Art Direction & Set Decoration, and it’s not hard to see why. The elaborate gothic-industrial design of Gotham City is slick and atmospheric…

Rise of the Guardians is a 2012 American 3D computer animated fantasy adventure film based on William Joyce’s The Guardians of Childhood book series. Produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Paramount Pictures, it was released on November 21, 2012 and received mixed to positive critical reception.

Set about 200 years after the book series, the film tells a story about the Guardians who enlist Jack Frost to stop Pitch, the Bogeyman, from engulfing the world in fear and darkness. This film features the voices of Chris Pine (Jack Frost), Alec Baldwin (North [aka Santa Claus]),

You thought you knew him. America’s 16th President. The Great Emancipator. Writer of the Gettysburg Address. Wearer of top hat and chin curtain beard. But as he declares in opening lines of this “However history remembers me, if it remembers me at all, it shall only remember a fraction of the truth.”

The rest of the truth is this — Honest Abe was a vampire hunter, driven to action by his mother’s death at the hands (or should I say teeth) of the undead. Bet you didn’t learn that in history class.

And before we go any further, I may as well make an introduction: Abraham Van Helsing, meet…