By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic Inquiring about “Step Brothers,” Will Ferrell’s latest comedic belly whop into the adolescent muck and mire, someone asked, “Isn’t that about two fortyish guys acting like they’re fourteen?” To which I replied, “No, actually, it’s about two fortyish guys acting like they’re seven.”
By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic It is dark, indeed. And complicated through the first act when director Christopher Nolan dabs in blacks and grays the gloomy exposition for his Batman reprise. It’s Gotham, yet might as well be postwar Vienna on paranoia-inducing hallucinogens. But great irony is at work here. And it saves “The…
By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic If you still haven’t had your fill of faux-gothic tales, wherein mystical/and or comic superheroes, attended by volumes of liturgy and lore, serve as models for the eternal fight between good and bad, lightness and darkness, truth and falsehood and whatever else reeks of universal quandary, then “Hellboy II:…
By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic I think it was Henry Miller who recommended we judge him solely by his works, and not his personal life. That way, he suggested, there’d be less chance of us being disappointed. But that failing, the author of “Tropic of Cancer” said he couldn’t care less. Which is essentially…
By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic Exiting from a showing of “WALL-E,” a colorful swath of satirical, post apocalyptic animation directed by Andrew Stanton (“Finding Nemo”), I wondered if the two little fat kids in front of me got the message. After all, part of the film’s cautionary tale about an Earth no longer habitable…
By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic Would you believe yet another TV sitcom reprised to feature length proportions? Yep, this week’s updated throwback is “Get Smart,” the 1960s small screen spoof of everything spies which featured the quick-clipped jibes of Don Adams as Agent 86/ Maxwell Smart, and Barbara Feldon as 99, his lovely, competent…
By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic Musing the inevitable inquiry–“What’s better, ‘Iron Man’ or ‘The Incredible Hulk?’”–a comic book of the mind transports me back to a couple of ten-year-olds who could give that weighty question its deserved contemplation. Gamboling along the idyllic itinerary that was the way home from Saturday’s matinee, such stuff was…
By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic Lest you be thought a fool, you don’t recommend “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan” without prefacing. Stuff like, ‘Maybe I’m crazy. I know it isn’t good filmmaking and it’s completely stupid, but hey, Adam Sandler makes me laugh.’ It’s pretty much what folks said decades ago about Jerry…
By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic Point of disclosure: I have never witnessed one episode of “Sex and the City.” Nope, not when it was first making waves for its frankness on HBO, nor during its extended life in rerun. My opinion of Michael Patrick King’s big screen reprise might as well represent the Martian…
By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic Whether “Redbelt” is an intellectual look at martial arts or a martial arts film written and directed by an intellectual, leave it to Pulitzer Prize winner David Mamet to be the brains behind this engaging lesson in philosophy and brawn. Constructed in the auteur’s savvy, wisecracking style, it further…
