‘The Hobbit’ stays atop box office for third week
By Christy Lemire
“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” continues to rule them all at the box office, staying on top for a third-straight week with nearly $33 million.
“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” continues to rule them all at the box office, staying on top for a third-straight week with nearly $33 million.
“Argo” — Directing just his third feature, Ben Affleck has come up with a seamless blend of detailed international drama and breathtaking suspense, with just the right amount of dry humor to provide context and levity. He shows a deft handling of tone, especially in making difficult transitions between scenes in Tehran, Washington and Hollywood, but also gives one of his strongest performances yet in front of the camera. The story of a rescue during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis sounds like eat-your-vegetables cinema, and mixing it with an inside-Hollywood comedy sounds impossible, but Affleck and screenwriter Chris Terrio pull it all off.
“The Central Park Five” takes an emotionally charged subject — the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of five black and Hispanic teenage boys for the rape of a white female jogger — and makes its case in a straightforward, detached manner.
To borrow a line from Depeche Mode, death is everywhere in “Skyfall.” James Bond’s mortality has never been in such prominent focus, but the demise of the entire British spy game as we know it seems imminent, as well.
There’s no mistaking the similarities. A childhood on a dusty farm, a love of fast vehicles, a rebel who battles an overpowering empire — George Lucas is the hero he created, Luke Skywalker.
The hype has been building for years and it couldn’t possibly be more deafening at this point. After a series of summer blockbusters that individually introduced Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America, all these characters come together alongside several other friends and foes in “Marvel’s The Avengers.” And with director and co-writer [...]
Head butts would seem to hurt, right? That’s clearly the point of them, but it would seem to be just as painful to be the butter as the buttee. In “Killer Elite,” this is probably the most primal method of attack on display, but even the noisy intensity and frequency of the skull bashings — [...]
Let Tony Stark make the wisecracks and Nick Fury give the intimidating commands. As Steve Rogers, Chris Evans brings an earnest dignity and intelligence to “Captain America: The First Avenger,” the final Marvel Comics set-up for next summer’s all-star blockbuster “The Avengers.” There’s little humor here outside a few moments in which this superhero discovers [...]
If last year’s “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1″ marked the beginning of the end with a gripping feeling of doom and gloom, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2″ wraps things up once and for all on a note of melancholy. Oh, it’s dramatic, to be sure: gorgeous, somber and startling [...]
LOS ANGELES— There’s no shortage of movies about weddings, and most of them are pretty lame. They usually feature the most stereotypical depictions of women being neurotic, naggy, insecure or all of the above, they’re crammed with corny slapstick, and they frequently culminate with a mad dash to an airport or train station for some [...]
