michael's movie reviews
2012
These are the movies I reviewed in 2012.
reviewed 2012.12.25
This is an animated movie set in a bee hive...
reviewed 2012.12.14
This is a much-celebrated animated movie from much-celebrated Pixar...
reviewed 2012.12.13
I get the gritty tone of the recent Bond films...
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
reviewed 2012.11.23
Well, this year is turning out be really something. A lousy James Bond movie, a Tarantino movie I'll avoid at all costs, and now a really disappointing adaptation of The Hobbit, which is one of my favorite books.I understand why they made this movie (and its forthcoming sequels(!)) after the success of "Lord of the Rings" but I think it's doing the book a..
reviewed 2012.10.15
This is a story of two young people falling in love in a tiny island community...
reviewed 2012.10.14
This is an amusing story with a great cast about a struggling writer whose unstable and mercurial friend tries to draw him out...
reviewed 2012.09.29
You can probably understand everything you need to know about this movie from the title...
reviewed 2012.09.18
This is a dramatic telling of the implosion of an investment bank during the (totally over) Great Financial Crisis...
reviewed 2012.09.12
This is a documentary about the great financial crisis, narrated by Matt Damon...
reviewed 2012.09.03
This is an animated movie about a villain with minions, a lair, and a mad scientist...
reviewed 2012.09.02
This is a science-fiction story set in a near future dystopia that is looking more and more likely by the day. Retrograde scavengers slaughter one another over scraps left over from the obviously collapsed global civilization that proceeded them. One tip this movie shares; when someone offers you a meal of "some meat I found" it's human flesh.Our hero comes to a town where a madman possesses the..
reviewed 2012.08.14
This is a science-fiction flick in which an assassin kills people sent through a chute from the future...
reviewed 2012.07.19
This is an animated kids movie about a collection of zoo animals that wind up being shipped off to the African island nation of Madagascar...
reviewed 2012.06.02
This is a movie about a retired CIA spy who is classified "RED": Retired, Extremely Dangerous...
reviewed 2012.05.22
A bored couple living in New Jersey head to Manhattan for a night on the town in an effort to save their stale marriage...
reviewed 2012.05.05
This is the story of a family of three who agree to take up the care of an isolated hotel in the mountains during the off season...
reviewed 2012.04.15
We got about fifteen minutes into this when I realized that I hated everybody in it. I looked up the director and realized that it was Woody Allen. This told me that it would remain indulgent and awful. We watched something else.It's not often that I'm put off to a point that I won't bother with a movie...
reviewed 2012.03.21
The gang from the first installment is back for more in this animated sequel. The land is threatened once again, and things look grim for our heroes. For some reason, the lead panda character seems not to have made much progress as a warrior since we last saw him, and now we have upped the ante on the angst he feels on being the only panda in the kingdom.The action is superb, the banter is good,..
reviewed 2012.02.11
This is a story about some corner of the US south where a young lady grows up in a white household with black servants...
reviewed 2012.01.22
This is the story of a non-super young man who takes it upon himself to become a crime-fighting superhero. He quickly sustains several injuries. He then undergoes treatment that somehow changes his nervous system and he winds up with low sensitivity to pain. So encouraged, he redoubles his efforts and winds up tangling with the mob.They respond by trying to kill him, and he is only saved when tw..
reviewed 2012.01.18
This is a low-key Sci-Fi story about some kids who decide that something's up in their mid-western town...