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Movie Review: Star Trek: Into Darkness

Fresno Bee | May 17, 2013

Director J.J. Abrams proved with 2009's "Star Trek" that it is OK to boldly go where others had gone before, as long as the journey is exciting, original, entertaining and respectful to legions of loyal fans. His film, which found the balance between reprising and reimagining, was a direct hit. In his second voyage on the Starship Enterprise, Abrams has perfected that approach. "Star Trek Into Darkness" is the best work since Gene Roddenberry brought the franchise to life in the 1960s. Abrams shows a deep and passionate loyalty for all of the incarnations of "Star Trek," while also bringing a fresh approach that makes the familiar seem a... more

Movie Review: The Great Gatsby

Associated Press | May 10, 2013

If any piece of classic American literature should be depicted on film with wildly decadent and boldly inventive style, it's "The Great Gatsby." After all, who was the character of Jay Gatsby himself if not a spinner of grandiose tales and a peddler of lavish dreams? And Baz Luhrmann would seem like the ideal director to bring F. Scott Fitzgerald's story to the screen yet again, to breathe new life into these revered words, having shaken up cultural institutions previously with films like "William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet" and "Moulin Rouge!" This is the man who dared to stage the iconic balcony scene in a swimming pool, so mixing in ... more

Movie Review: Peeples

Associated Press | May 14, 2013

The people of "Peeples" make a better impression than most collections of oddballs in the weary mold of comedies centered on meeting the prospective in-laws. They still overstay their welcome, though. With a long, boring buildup that finally pays off with scattered laughs in the second half, "Peeples" also manages to leave a better impression than the "Tyler Perry Presents" tag on the posters might imply. This is broad comedy, but nowhere near as broad - or boorish and shrill - as producer Perry's own family adventures (for disclosure's sake, there are screechy relations here, but Perry's Madea fortunately isn't among them). Craig Robin... more

Movie Review: The Reluctant Fundamentalist

| May 06, 2013

Mohsin Hamid's 2007 masterpiece, "The Reluctant Fundamentalist," makes wizardly use of a constrained point of view in ways that don't readily lend themselves to film. The voice of the novel's Pakistani narrator, Changez, is all we have to go by as he tells his story to an American he meets seemingly by chance in the streets of Lahore. The wary American may have an agenda or mission he's trying to carry out. So may Changez. But the book isn't a political thriller in any conventional sense. Instead, it's a parsing of Changez's malleable, cross-cultural identity as it's warped, first by the promise of the American Dream, then by historical e... more

Movie Review: Iron Man 3

Associated Press | May 03, 2013

In the galaxy of big-screen superheros - a rather glum lot - Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man is the snappy one. He's the sarcastic, motor-mouthed, preening, self-referential do-gooder, as opposed to all those self-serious crusaders. No matter how much of a scrap heap of metal-twisting mayhem the franchise piles on (and it's a lot), Downey's sheer charm - his unsentimental, offhand yammering - is the only real super power in Marvel's "Iron Man" trilogy. "Iron Man 3" follows not just "Iron Man 2" but the box-office busting "The Avengers," in which Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, joined forces with other superheros. These global blockbusters are ... more

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