Movie Review – The Far Country (1954)
by NIR SHALEV
Anthony Mann is my favorite Western director. All of his Westerns, or at least most of them depict anti-heroes and bad-guys-turned-good, but The Far Country is quite remarkably different. Read more
Capsule Movie Review – Man on a Ledge (2012)
by HELEN GEIB
Man on a Ledge is a tough nut to review because the less you know going in, the more fun it is to watch it unfold slash hurtle along to its destination. It starts with a man climbing out the window of an old New York City skyscraper hotel. To give you a sense of the kind of movie it is, I’ll go one step further and reveal that he’s not suicidal. Read more
Capsule Movie Review – Underworld: Awakening (2012)
by HELEN GEIB
The vampires and werewolves are at each others’ throats again in Underworld: Awakening. Two things must be understood: 1) this is the fourth installment in a monster movie series and 2) the story is at the service of the supernatural fantasy action, not the other way around. Taken on those terms it works rather well. Read more 
Capsule Movie Review – Haywire (2012)
by HELEN GEIB
Haywire is a stylish action thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh. It works just fine as a straight-up action movie, a streamlined 90 minutes of car chases, foot chases with a touch of free-running, gunfights, and mixed martial arts hand-to-hand fighting carried by a “who set me up and why?” plot. For viewers ready to play along, it works even better as a sophisticated cinematic game. Read more
Capsule Movie Review – Contraband (2012)
by HELEN GEIB
Mark Wahlberg heads a strong cast as a career criminal gone straight who is pulled back into the old life when his family is threatened in the new thriller Contraband. Kate Beckinsale plays his loyal wife, Ben Foster his turncoat best friend and former partner-in-crime, Giovanni Ribisi the hired muscle, Caleb Landry Jones the inept criminal brother-in-law who gets them all into hot water, Lukas Haas one of the crew, and Diego Luna a Panama City crime boss. The film is competently executed but unlike the caper at its center, never really comes together. Strong shades of The Italian Job regardless, the main culprit is a more general over-familiarity. Read more
Movie Review – The Adventures of Tintin (2011)
by NIR SHALEV
After a 23 year hiatus, Indiana Jones left us begging for more but has at last managed to wrap up the trilogy. Wait… I could have sworn that there was another Indy film that came out in 2007…. Oh, wait! No! It was just a nightmare that the entire planet shared. Well, back to the point: We last saw Indiana Jones Jr. and Sr. drink from the Holy Grail and ride off into the sunset, both literally and metaphorically. And now, master filmmaker Steven Spielberg’s first adaptation of the beloved Tintin cartoon books and animated series has hit the big screens in an all new 3D animated, motion captured, action/adventure extravaganza. It’s nothing short of breathtaking. Read more
Thinking Outside the Multiplex in Indiana (January 6, 2012)
by HELEN GEIB
Welcome to the first edition of TOTM in IN of the new year! Hollywood kicks off the 2012 movie year with yet another exorcism horror movie, making this the perfect week to look outside the multiplex for your moviegoing needs. What will you see? Read more
Movie Review – Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)
by NIR SHALEV
Globetrotting IMF (Impossible Mission Force) super agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is on the job again; this time to find a man named Hendricks and to stop him from buying nuclear launch codes from other bad guys. Sounds simple, right? Read more
Movie Review – Take Shelter (2011)
by NIR SHALEV
This taught, intense, and powerful film opens with grim shots of graying skies. Our hero, Curtis (Michael Shannon) stares at them in slight confusion. He’s wondering whether it’s going to start raining but he also feels something more, something sinister. When it does start to rain, Curtis rubs the rainwater on his hands and notes that it’s yellow and feels like motor oil. Curious…. Read more
DVD of the Week – Review and Disc Commentary Track of A Scanner Darkly (2006)
by NIR SHALEV
Philip K. Dick is one of the greatest sci-fi novelists of the 20th century and was also, rightly, hugely paranoid. He believed so much that the FBI and CIA had files on him that they did eventually decide to open case files on him. Unfortunately, even though he claims that they allowed him to see his files, the files simply claimed the fact that they wanted to open files on him for investigative reasons and there was nothing on him there at all. It’s a weird and sad type of irony. That was during the 1970s. Read more