The Square
Oh, what a tangled web we weave....  It all started out so simply –  married construction manager, Raymond  (David Roberts), is having an affair with married hairdresser Carla (Claire van der Boom).  They might have talked about running away together before, but didn’t expect anything to come of it until one day Carla says her husband, Smithy (Anthony Hayes), is hiding a bag full of illicitly gained money in the house which she and Raymond should steal to run away and finally start their new lives together.  All they have to do is burn down the house so Smithy thinks the money was destroyed in the fire.  No one gets hurt and they’ll be together.    Thus starts a tail of ever increasing mis-steps, violence, guilt... READ MORE >>>

Kick-Ass
Is that a bazooka and a jetpack?  Yes. Yes it is.    Kick-Ass is the latest take on the super hero movie, bringing out the gruesome humor and comic violence normally reserved for the inked page to life on screen.  The hero, Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson, Nowhere Boy) is tired of super heroes being works of fiction and decides to fulfill every nerd’s fantasy of becoming a real super hero..  After ordering supplies off the internet, Lizewski becomes Kick-Ass, a neighborhood crime fighter who tries to do-good, while ironically getting his ass kicked.  Joining Kick-Ass is Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz, 500 Days of Summer) and Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) who are ultra violent and extremely competent heroes, and Red Mist (Christopher “McLuvin” Mintz-Plasse) who’s a super-ficial-hero,... READ MORE >>>

The Greatest
It's a very sad story indeed: a boy and a girl make love – each for the first time – and almost immediately afterwards, the boy, Bennett Brewer (Kick Ass's Aaron Johnson), is killed in a shocking car accident. The boy's family is a shattered mess, the girl is pregnant with nowhere to go. Synopsized thusly, The Greatest – written and directed by Shana Feste, in her directing debut – can be written off as a mash-up of Ordinary People and Juno. The Greatest is not as good as either of those films, but it's better than it sounds.    The Greatest – you're forgiven ... READ MORE >>>

The Warlords
The Warlords is based on the epic true story of the history of a war in China during the rule of the Qing Dynasty in 19th century, during the Taiping Rebellion of the 1860’s.  It begins with General Pang (Jet Li – Hero, Forbidden Kingdom) who is the sole survivor of a bloody massacre by playing dead. He joins a group of bandits led by Er Hu (Andy Lau – House of Flying Daggers, Infernal Affairs) and Wu Yang (Takeshi Kaneshiro – Red Cliff, House of Flying Daggers). After the village is attacked Pang becomes blood brothers with the two men and they join the army. The film is about where loyalties lie in time of war.     I felt this film tried to cram too... READ MORE >>>

City Island
Watching Andy Garcia in peak form is something to see, whether he's portraying a yuppie Internal Affairs officer (in Internal Affairs), Michael Corleone's hotheaded nephew (The Godfather Part 3), or a soul-sick, rookie District Attorney surrounded by controversy (Sidney Lumet's underrated Night Falls on Manhattan). Garcia's comic talents have always been understated – he lets the rest of the Ocean's Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen crew walk off with their scenes together – but in City Island, it's a pleasure to watch him take center stage.    Garcia plays Vince Rizzo, a corrections officer (the currently accepted term for "prison guard," and something Vince is constantly correction people on) and lifelong resident of City Island, a fishing... READ MORE >>>