Christopher Lawrence is the movie critic for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
clawrence@reviewjournal.com … @life_onthecouch on Twitter. 702-380-4567
Prepare to be transported to an era when staying in a hotel was considered exotic, romantic, even something of an adventure, and not just another sleepless night because you can’t stop worrying about the potential for bedbugs or who did what to whom on that bedspread that keeps brushing up against your lower lip.
The goosebumpy, epic-looking opening minutes of “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” which showed the titular mutants battling Sentinels, grabbed me by my geeky parts in way’s last night’s reveal of 35 minutes of “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” just didn’t.
Apparently, every ounce of innocent, sweet-natured joy that made 2011’s “The Muppets” such a whimsical burst of nostalgia can be traced back to one person. Surprisingly, it’s the guy who showed the world his dangly bits in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.”
In “Non-Stop,” Liam Neeson stars as an air marshal on a New York-to-London flight who starts receiving text messages from someone on the plane threatening to kill one of the passengers every 20 minutes until $150 million is wired to a bank account.
The Kevin Costner action movie feels like something Liam Neeson was too busy to make. Given the month’s incredibly low standards, though, it’s everything a February movie should be.
The anticipated remake of “RoboCop” is technically better than the 1987 film, but the fun is gone as it stuggles with ethics.
OK, so that’s probably not going to happen. But the new animated offering is polling as high or higher than every current best-picture nominee at Rotten Tomatoes.
With a cast toplined by writer-director George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray and John Goodman, it’s the “Ocean’s Eleven” of regular-guys-trying-to-save-priceless-works-of-art-from-Nazis-and-Russians movies. So why isn’t “The Monuments Men” more fun?
Your girlfriend/wife/mistress will want to see this movie. You will not. But pay attention to the pie scene.
Vanessa Hudgens and Ann Dowd star as Agnes “Apple” Bailey and Kathy DiFiore in “Gimme Shelter,” which is more a celebration of real-life DiFiore’s work than Agnes’ story.
“Her” is a love story that’s sad and funny and touching and overflowing with every bit of the inventiveness you’d expect from the visual visionary Spike Jonze.
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.
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.
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.
