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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 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 of…
