Years ago the word Hollywood conjured up images of glamour, legend and famous actresses and actors. Movie fans clamored for movie magazines that had in-depth stories about the stars’ lives and couldn’t wait to see them on the big screen. Movies were designed around star power and if the plot was exceptional – it was added value to the experience. Read more

Christopher Nolan’s concept is as irresistible as its execution. Read more>>

Just as James Cameron fashioned a far-distant world in “Avatar,” Christopher Nolan has created an even more intriguing inner world in this terrifying new sci-fi thriller. Read more

The strikingly original character Larsson brought to life is, alas, already getting predictable. Read more>>

In The Girl Who Played with Fire, Lisbeth is no longer the sometimes mesmerizing sidekick. Instead, she’s the very obvious, and less mesmerizing, center. Read more>>

Like Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium” trilogy, you need to read/see “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” in order to understand this sequel. In the first movie, crusading Stockholm business journalist, Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) enlisted the help of a punk, pierced-and-tattooed computer hacker, Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), to solve a 40 year-old cold case. Read more

If Norman Rockwell were alive today, when there’s a smorgasbord of options for building a clan, his picture of the American dinner might resemble the post-nuclear family of The Kids Are All Right, Lisa Cholodenko’s comedy opening Friday. Here are two lesbian mothers, their two teenagers - each the offspring of one of them - and the sperm-donor dad gathered around the picnic table, getting to know each other over burgers and chips 18 years after bio-dad’s deposit at the sperm bank.Read more>>

In The Kids Are All Right, Lisa Cholodenko’s lovely comedy about family, routines and perspectives are shifting. Read more>>

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, John McTiernan, who created the original back in 1987, should feel quite complimented – because there’s not a shred of originality in this sci-fi sequel except, perhaps, the opening scene. It begins with an unconscious man, freefalling from a great height. He awakens mid-air, starts screaming and grabbing for the ripcord on a parachute he didn’t know he had. Now that’s an attention-grabber! Read more

Predators is, for the most part, a pedestrian, fanboyish rebooting of John McTiernan’s prototypically efficient action pic. Read more>>