Movie Review

Thor: The Dark World

Wed, 12/04/2013 - 11:24 -- Bob Gibbons

This movie struggles to get started. It begins with characters – the Dark Elves – where it’s tough to decide which is worse: the costumes or their acting. The dialog is in a made-up language that has a hard, guttural, abrasive sound. The Elves’ home may well be a desolate realm; it looks more like a warehouse, somewhere in Los Angeles. And the Aether, their supreme energy force, looks like gallons of cheap red wine, shot in slow motion. But then we go to Asgard, where Thor and Odin and other super-heroes live, and a plot begins to take shape.

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Thor: The Dark World
Movie Review

Last Vegas

Mon, 11/25/2013 - 13:41 -- Bob Gibbons

This is, at best, a mildly entertaining movie for older audiences. The good news is – there is nothing embarrassing in it. The bad news is – there is nothing particularly funny either. If you’ve seen the trailers, you’ve seen most of the best jokes. The whole movie plays like a montage of Las Vegas’s greatest hits, a look at what there is to see and do in the city. If you’ve been there, you’ve seen and done them all. You know the stars of this movie – Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Kevin Kline and Morgan Freeman. Of those, Freeman is the most fun to watch because he can elicit a smile from just a twist of the head, the arch of an eyebrow.

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Last Vegas
Movie Review

All Is Lost

Mon, 11/25/2013 - 13:38 -- Bob Gibbons

In some ways, this is a perfect title. Here is what will be “lost” if you decide to see this movie: your time, the price of admission, the cost of transportation to get there, any other expenses you have. Oh, but this is a huge waste of time – and everything else. And here are six more opinions: I saw it on a Monday night, and when the film began, there were seven people – including me – in the theatre. Not a big audience, but not bad for a Monday. But then, two left. Then one more.

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All is Lost
Movie Review

The Fifth Estate

Mon, 11/04/2013 - 15:44 -- Bob Gibbons

“Man is least himself when he talks as his own person,” Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) says early in this film. “But if you give him a mask, he will tell you the truth. If we could find one moral man, one whistle-blower that man can topple the most powerful and most repressive of regimes.”

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Movie Review
The Fifth Estate

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