“Angels & Demons” – The Good, the Bad and the Blurry – 2 & ½ popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic
Just as you didn’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s Jewish Rye, you don’t have to be Catholic to appreciate “Angels & Demons.” But, like the little old lady said in defense of her chicken soup Rx to treat a cold, “It couldn’t hurt.” Defrocked of its church [...]

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“Star Trek” – The Way They Were – 3 popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic
While the old calendar on the wall proclaims June 21 the first day of summer this year, fans of that cultural phenomenon known as the Summer Blockbuster will contend “Star Trek’s” recent arrival in movie theaters more aptly heralds the season. Either way, this prequel’s chronological hocus pocus will [...]

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“Ghosts of Girlfriends Past” – Spirited but Transparent – 2 popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic
Lovers of love stories who, like true fans of baseball, enjoy the pastime whether minor or major league, will at least appreciate the attempt made by Mark Waters’s “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.” Appropriating Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” and replacing Scrooge’s miser with Matthew McConaughey’s womanizer, it has its albeit [...]

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“No. 4 Street of Our Lady” – A Saintly Address, Indeed – 3 popcorns

 By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic
It is among the most confounding facts of our existence. Humankind is capable of terrible things and wonderful things. Documenting in “No. 4 Street of Our Lady” how Francisca Halamajowa saved the lives of fifteen Jews during the Holocaust, filmmakers Barbara Bird, Judy Maltz and Richie Sherman lyrically and hauntingly [...]

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“State of Play” …and of Confusion – 2 & ½ popcorns

 By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic  
Save for one twist, one turn and one cliché too many, “State of Play” makes for fairly engrossing entertainment of the nail biting kind. But while perching at seat’s edge as reporter Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) tries to find out if the killer is a military contractor, a congressman [...]

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“Observe and Report” – Comic Mission Accomplished – 2 & ½ popcorns

 By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic  
It’s hard to take Seth Rogen seriously. Which is probably why “Observe and Report,” a darkly comic tale about a bipolar mall security guard’s delusions of grandeur, rather works. You know the deal. The sad sack is so desirous of a status outside his disparaged lot in life that [...]

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“Monsters vs. Aliens” — A Battle for the Right Ages — 2 & ½ popcorns

 by Michael S. Goldberger, film critic  
As celebrated in “Monsters vs. Aliens,” one great thing about cartoons is that instead of dying a gruesome death when hit by a meteor you turn into a fifty-foot superhero. It’s in the DNA of animated characters. Susan, who becomes the heroine Ginormica, surely owes her very being to [...]

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“I Love You, Man” – Mandatory Viewing – 3 popcorns

 by Michael S. Goldberger, film critic  
Because in truth there is humor, in “I Love You, Man” there is hilarity. Mining an untapped wealth of philosophy about male friendship, director John Hamburg, who co-wrote the screenplay with Larry Levin, sprinkles his farcical little gem with profundity. He signaled his talent in “Along Came Polly” (2004). [...]

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“Race to Witch Mountain” – Good Start…Weak Finish – 2 & ½ popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic
Just out of the blocks this latest permutation of author Alexander Key’s sci-fi fantasy sparkles with newfound energy. “How novel,” we opine. However, once director Andy Fickman’s “Race to Witch Mountain” has unfurled all its 21st century refurbishments, the script assumes the repetitious ordinariness common to a game [...]

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“Watchmen” – Alternate Entertainment – 3 popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic
Finally, someone’s gotten this comic book-to-film thing right, or at least as right as the transport of different mediums, philosophies and the very definition of art itself will allow. “Watchmen,” Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Alan Moore’s literarily acclaimed graphic novel, is the pop culture equivalent of Yin and Yang [...]

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“Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li” – The Movie, Lost in Translation – 2 popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic
Several years back, a N.Y. Times columnist eloquently worried that emerging writers concerned with those lucrative motion picture rights would be making sure, consciously or not, that their novels were cinematic. Would literature lose its purity of purpose? Now, films like “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li” raise the [...]

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“Madea Goes to Jail” – Too Severe a Sentence – 1 & ½ popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic
When you were little and the cartoon’s protagonist didn’t realize who the villain was, it drove you nuts. You screamed at the TV, “Watch out, she’s bad.” Happily, the hero always heard you. If you’d like to revisit this Drama #101 lesson in smugly knowing way more than the [...]

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“The International” — Sleuther Not Quite World Class — 2 & ½ popcorns

by Michael S. Goldberger, film critic
Funny, how it works. When you’re hungry but too hurried to stop, you can’t help but pass one enticing food joint after the next. When love throws you a curve, every song intimately echoes your plight. And when it looks like the world’s evil bankers have absconded with the [...]

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“Getting The Oscars All Wrong”

 
By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic 
By now you’ve been inundated with Oscar picks. It has become a full-fledged pastime, a key component of that unofficial holiday between St. Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day.
No one is without an opinion. Every little kid in America knows he, too, may one day grow up to get all [...]

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“New in Town” – Same Old, Same Old – 2 popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic 
Too bad for Renée Zellweger. Plopped into a production company of virtual unknowns, aided only by co-star Harry Connick, Jr., she’s expected to make beguiling the seen-it-before triteness of director Jonas Elmer’s “New in Town.” Though she practically falls off her stiletto heels trying, there’s no saving this city mouse-country [...]

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