Capsule Movie Review – The Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012)
by HELEN GEIB
A new film by Aardman Animations (Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run) sells itself to their many fans. For The Pirates! Band of Misfits, based on a children’s book series, they bring their signature stop-motion claymation to a jolly tale of adventure on the high seas. Read more
Capsule Movie Review – The Raven (2012)
by HELEN GEIB
Edgar Allan Poe died in Baltimore in 1849. Cause of death: unknown. He had been found on the streets, near death and delirious.
Those are the biographical facts. It’s also the gist of the introductory title card of The Raven, a thriller set in the penurious genius’ obscure last days. Read more
Movie Review – Dark Shadows (2012)
by HELEN GEIB
Dark Shadows is director Tim Burton and star Johnny Depp’s collaboration to bring the ’70s cult favorite soap opera to the big screen. Read more 
Capsule Movie Review – Safe (2012)
by HELEN GEIB
Hollywood never tires of peddling left-wing paranoid conspiracy theories. Safe‘s is only the most outlandish element of an over-complicated plot also involving the Chinese mob, the Russian mob, crooked NYC cops, official corruption at the highest levels, a scruffy tough-guy hero, and a cute Chinese girl who is a math savant. Read more
Capsule Movie Review – The Raid: Redemption (2012)
by HELEN GEIB
The setting of The Raid: Redemption is the Indonesian version of the projects: a decaying housing block dominated by thuggish criminals and the crime lord who runs the place like his personal fiefdom. Read more
Movie Review – The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
by NIR SHALEV
It’s literally impossible to review The Cabin in the Woods without revealing the tiniest spoiler. Therefore I issue a tiny warning, but then again if you’ve seen the trailer you already know that this is not the typical ’80s slasher horror film. Read more
Capsule Movie Review – Lockout (2012)
by HELEN GEIB
Roger Ebert likes to use the term “Idiot Plot” to describe stories where the characters act like idiots at key plot junctures because if they didn’t, the movie would be over. Lockout has an Imbecile Plot: every person involved in the design, construction, and operation of the easily almost instantaneously irretrievably hijacked maximum security space station prison must have been a total imbecile. Read more
On DVD/Blu-ray – Review of King of Devil’s Island (2011)
by NIR SHALEV
Based on true events, King of Devil’s Island takes place at Norway’s Bastøy Boys Reformatory School in 1915. The movie shows that it was much more of a labor camp for boys of all ages than it was an actual school. The boys had reading classes and Bible studies but most of the time they were chopping down and stripping trees, digging, cleaning up the place, and so forth. Read more
Capsule Movie Review – Mirror Mirror (2012)
by HELEN GEIB
Director Tarsem’s Mirror Mirror is a family friendly re-telling of the Snow White fairytale, revamped for contemporary tastes and with the emphasis on comedy. Snow White (Lily Collins)- her friends call her Snow- is still sweet and lovely, but doesn’t go to sleep. In fact, her concern for her impoverished subjects motivates her to join the dwarves’ band of highwaymen. Yes I said highwaymen: formerly respectable townsfolk, they were banished by edict of the evil queen and took up residence in a mammoth tree stump in the perpetually snow-covered beech forest outside the castle. Read more
Capsule Movie Review – Wrath of the Titans (2012)
by HELEN GEIB
Wrath of the Titans reunites Perseus (Sam Worthington), Zeus (Liam Neeson), and Hades (Ralph Fiennes) for an abbreviated quest that plays second fiddle to a medley of fights with fearsome, hideous mythological creatures. Read more
