Movie Reviews

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but Peter Jackson thinks otherwise. In his heralded return to Middle Earth, the director of the award-winning Lord of the Rings franchise keeps many things the same but makes one very risky change that has a detrimental effect on the overall film. Your opinion of the film will rely heavily on whether you can get past this alteration.

Read FilmJabber’s full The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey movie review.

Following in the vein of the Paradise Lost trilogy, the documentary The Central Park Five tells a story of crime and racism in New York City as five black youths are arrested and subsequently convicted for the brutal rape of a jogger in Central Park, despite an overwhelming lack of evidence. The movie tells an important story, but the movie lacks the spark and passion expected about the subject.

Read FilmJabber’s full The Central Park Five movie review.

The end of the world is apparently scary enough, because 2012 has been an extremely disappointing year for horror movies. The Woman in Black showed promise, until it didn’t. The Devil Inside made me want to go to hell. Many others failed to deliver, too. V/H/S, on the other hand, manages to buck the trend by teaching you not to have a threesome with a demon.

Read FilmJabber’s full V/H/S movie review.

When it was announced that a fourth Jason Bourne movie was being developed without star Matt Damon or director Paul Greengrass, I was worried. When it was announced that returning writer Tony Gilroy was taking over the directing reigns and making a Jason Bourne movie that would include its main character, I was ready to throw in the towel. Having now watched The Bourne Legacy, I wish Universal Pictures would have thrown in the towel long ago.

Read FilmJabber’s full The Bourne Legacy movie review.

Two family movies. Two great movies. Two films that share diametrically opposed box office performances.

Finding Nemo and Arthur Christmas were recently released to Blu-ray and DVD, the former in Disney’s Collector’s Edition packaging, the latter for the first time since its theatrical release last Thanksgiving. Finding Nemo is generally regarded as one of the best animated movies of all time, and it is also one of the highest-earning Disney movies over that same period (all time). Arthur Christmas, meanwhile, was widely disregarded by audiences and bombed at theaters.

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Bill Murray plays someone other than Bill Murray for a change in the entertaining but wildly inconsistent Hyde Park on Hudson, a film that is at once a romantic drama and a lighthearted comedy. From the director of Venus and Notting Hill, Hyde Park on Hudson works best when it’s funny – and falls flat when it tries to be something more.

Read FilmJabber’s full Hyde Park on Hudson movie review.

Killing Them Softly is the kind of movie that makes audiences hate movie critics. With a 77% convincingly fresh rating on RottenTomatoes, the new Brad Pitt crime drama appears like a movie worth seeing. The movie flopped in its opening weekend, however – the worst debut for Pitt in a long time. Many pundits said it was because people don’t want to see the actor playing against type. I blamed the marketing, or lack thereof. But there’s a simpler factor at play…

Read FilmJabber’s full Killing Them Softly movie review.

As harmless as a veggie sandwich but only as satisfying as one, The Odd Life of Timothy Green is about a sterile couple who accidentally grow a veggie boy in their garden to raise as their own. The movie could easily be a horror film, but it’s actually a feel-good family film. Odd indeed.

Read FilmJabber’s full The Odd Life of Timothy Green movie review.

A boy named Norman sees dead people. He battles an evil witch and a pack of zombies. But Norman isn’t in a horror flick; he’s the main character in the family film ParaNorman, a beautifully crafted and imaginative stop-motion-capture movie that, while far from groundbreaking, is fun to watch.

Read FilmJabber’s full ParaNorman movie review.

Your wife has been murdered. Your baby has been kidnapped. And you’re not sure if it’s all in your head, or if demonic children who feed on fear really are responsible for it all. Citadel is the intriguing new movie from writer/director Ciaran Foy, and one of the more unique horror entries in recent memory.

Read FilmJabber’s full Citadel movie review.

It’s the alternate ending to Armageddon we never asked for. The space shuttle destroyed, a massive asteroid hurtling toward earth, humanity has days before it is wiped from the planet, and the planet destroyed. Within this context is set Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, a romantic quasi-comedy with lots of promise and not much else.

Read FilmJabber’s full Seeking a Friend for the End of the World movie review.

A boy flees his Khaki Scouts troop, a girl runs away from her parents, and an island sheriff and scout troop leader put into effect a massive manhunt to find them in Wes Anderson’s offbest comedy Moonrise Kingdom, an original and amusing, if not ultimately unremarkable, return to form for the director.

Read FilmJabber’s full Moonrise Kingdom movie review.