Director Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio revisit the anything-goes late ’80s and early ’90s with such debauchery that it should elicit abject horror but mostly plays as comedy.
Christopher Lawrence
Christopher Lawrence is the movie critic for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
clawrence@reviewjournal.com … @life_onthecouch on Twitter. 702-380-4567
Fittingly for a movie all about characters pretending to be other people, “American Hustle” finds writer-director David O. Russell channeling Scorsese, Christian Bale doing his best De Niro and Jeremy Renner seemingly auditioning for the lead in “Funny How?: The Joe Pesci Story.”
In the hands of Emma Thompson, “Mary Poppins” author P.L. Travers is a spoonful of something, all right, but it sure ain’t sugar.
The Hurricane Katrina drama “Hours” was scheduled to have opened Friday at AMC Town Square (as well as on video on demand) long before its star, Paul Walker, was killed Nov. 30.
For a movie that’s all about literally going home again, “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” is further proof of just how hard it is to do so figuratively.
“Out of the Furnace’s” plot is almost stunningly straightforward. No twists, no turns. There’s literally nothing fancy about it. Director Scott Cooper just trusts his talented cast to burrow deep into their roles.
It was as raw and experimental as the New Orleans jazz that provided its heartbeat.
James Franco is both the best and the worst thing about “Homefront,” the new backwoods thriller in which Jason Statham turns rednecks into broken-necks.
How good is “Dallas Buyers Club”? Matthew McConaughey shed nearly 50 pounds for his role, blows the walls off of whatever boxes Hollywood has put him in and doesn’t utter a single “awright, awright, awright.”
“The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” should more than satisfy the cravings of fans who’ve spent the 20-month gap between movies quivering with anticipation.
Unless you’ve spent the past few weeks under a rock — assuming that rock lacked access to Wi-Fi, cellular data and over-the-air TV and radio transmissions, as well as run-of-the-mill chatterboxes — you’re now painfully aware that Friday marks the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination.
Just you and Robert Redford. On a boat. With no one around for miles.
“Thor” was half of a very good superhero movie. Thrust into a civilization of Earthlings he couldn’t quite comprehend, Chris Hemsworth’s swaggering Asgardian made for some delightful god-of-thunder-out-of-water moments.
It’s not the kind of thing most moviegoers are itching to see.
It’s being positioned as “The Hangover” for the stooped over. A raucous “Cocoon” in a casino. But “Last Vegas” isn’t that movie.
