Visual splendor. Good acting. Cabling a tragedy; disastrous. Why did director Baz Luhrmann illustrate impending death by using a sinister image of a billboard of a man's bespeckled face accompanied by enhanced music? The struggle of midwestern, dirt poor vet Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) to find peace within himself by...

Yes, Robert Downey, Jr. ,is Iron Man. With or without a suit of iron he is possibly the finest actor out there. He takes his moments. His timing is impeccable; his sense of humor, flawless; his looks, more than appealing; his movements are always about to spring into the unknown;...

Whoa! Pain and Gain's a sinner and a winnah! Don't be put off by the poster and its violent macho image or its terrible title. This is gangsta that should impress Scorsese. And Tarantino. Yep, Michael Bay knows how to make crime funny. And violent. And bloody. The works. But...

Oblivion begins with great art direction and sci-fi special effects and ends with you longing for Tom Cruise to return to a romantic comedy. Any romantic comedy. This story is one we've seen before in the barrage of time travel films, but the look is one we have not seen....

Whoopee! 3D IMAX works in this Dino-rama experience. Is it a dinosaur? A tyrannosaur? Help? What is it? What is that sound? The thumping? Surely you've seen Jurassic Park by now, but if you haven't, you're in for a real treat. The sound and the terrific state of the art...

And they all lived together happily forever. Ba humbug. Mediocrity in big budget super-duper fan fare. An unseen enemy takes over bodies, erases memories and threatens mankind. Oh, please... hand me the catsup. William Hurt is wasted in a thankless role and Frances Fisher plays another disgruntled character. When are...

Charming. A refreshing topic and setting for a romance between opposites. Tina Fey plays by-the-book Princeton admissions officer Portia Nathan. Paul Rudd oversees an alternative high school in a free-wheeling, loosey goosey style which only Paul Rudd as John Pressman can portray. Rudd has never been better. His frequent tendency...

No red slippers. No need. Oz works. Color, vivid color, is the star. James Franco as Oscar Diggs is good. The witches Evanora (Rachel Weisz) and Theodora (Mila Kunis) are great, both beautiful and ugly when playing evil and it is Glenda, the good witch, played with complex emotions by...

An except from Picasso's Ghost.

At sunset two days after Picasso's death, Paloma, Maya, her husband, Claude and I squeezed into Maya's old Citroen for our journey. Maya's husband drove. I was told to be quiet and to listen to the radio though my French was inadequate for this task....

Julian Hough radiates and Josh Duhamel, who has a dreamlike quality, light up the screen. Hough (Katie) redeems herself after her tepid performance in Rock of Ages and her hoofing as a regular on Dancing with the Stars. Maybe it is time for her to pack it in and focus...

I was jilted in 1975, but today I feel fine. It has taken me years to get over the damage to my self esteem. The feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness. In my heart I just knew something was wrong with me and rather than be found out, I told friends...

Great cast. Mediocre script. Could just as easily have been an episode on a TV cop series except for megastar Mark Wahlberg. When does this actor miss? Well, maybe he does here, but then there is Russell Crowe who triumphs as the big bad mayor and who redeems himself after...

When you've seen Les Miserables on Broadway and heard its soaring score, you will have a problem sitting through Tom Hooper's movie that diminishes this powerful score and ups the ante in the story. Oh, Hugh Jackman is sensational as is Anne Hathaway, but the real sleeper is Samantha Banks...

Django Unchained has the passion and spirit that was missing in Lincoln. Tarantino shows the crude cruel, seamy side of slavery that Spielberg glossed over. Slaves fighting to their death in the living room of a sumptuous plantation while wagers are placed on their lives. Blood is spilled on...

Matt Damon co-wrote and co-produced A Promised Land, a film about the evils of fracking. This has a boring ring to it. But it is not. Matt Damon films are not boring. As Jason Bourne he has assured us of that. Also in 2007, Damon was chosen as People's Sexiest...

Having seen the original Cirque du Soleil in Battery Park in Manhattan several years ago, I was not eager to see this film. How wrong I was. Cirque du Soleil: World's Away is a dramatic mix of circus arts and street entertainment. The acts are spectacular and original though some...

Icon Barbra Streisand (Joyce) comes out of near retirement to help cheer us up this holiday season. She portrays an overpowering Jewish mother to Seth Rogen (Andy Brewster), but she is gentle and kind in this portrait of a mother whom many of us know whether we are Jewish or...

While initially I was not eager to see J.R.R.Tolkien's The Hobbit, I am pleased to say that it drew me in, invited me to study its opening and then once the dwarves appeared, it swept me away.

One spectacular special effects sequence after another. Its ending will lift you...

The Sessions is a home run for the healing powers of sex and how repressed a society we are -- despite all of our iPad and techno-net ways of relating. We have lost touch with the power of touch. Mark O'Brien, (John Hawkes) is a victim of polio and condemned...

Grandfather Rod Stewart, the rocker, happy at last. The title of one of his ex wife's memoirs suits him as well.

"Spoiled rotten tends to be shorthand for my childhood," Rod writes in his autobiography. "I object. There wasn't much to spoil anyone with." Rod's self-effacing wit rips at...