In this brave new world, even a meditation on healing the rift between workaholic dad and wayward son is apt excuse for Hollywood to let loose yet another raucous raft of violence. Meant for mass consumption at the multiplex by undiscerning youths with nothing better to do, “A Good Day to Die Hard” is the…
If this, my annual Oscar prediction column, has reached your eyes, I have been successful, and perhaps in some small way the causes of democracy and freedom will have been served. You see, I have been kidnapped. The vile event occurred just as I set about to forecast the winners of the 85th Annual Academy…
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”…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic The great thing about Patrick Tatopoulos’s “Underworld: Rise of the Lycans” is that you really don’t need to pay attention. Sure, it’s complicated as logarithms, its dramatis personae a hodgepodge of vampires, werewolves and combinations thereof. But if you’re under fifteen you know all about it; over fifteen,…
