Review: Meet the Mormons
NEWS FLASH: It’s always nice to have your positive reviews backed up by box office success, but this weekend’s relative blockbuster performance of Meet the Mormons is both unexpected and overwhelming. Take that Hollywood titans who believe a film has to have sex and violence to be a success. Just how well did it do?…
Jackson Galaxy and the Amazing Cat Houses
Hollywood loves a good cat house, as we proved recently by absolutely packing the “Giving Shelter” event to raise funds for FixNation. Fifteen of L.A.’s top architects teamed up with My Cat From Hell‘s Jackson Galaxy to showcase some wildly creative cat shelters that I know my two kitty boyz would go crazy over. Coming…
Review: The Boxtrolls
Finally Fall! It’s a great time to venture back into the theaters with the wee ones in your life, and make sure you do it with as much time as possible before Halloween, because The Boxtrolls are sure to inspire the ‘it’ costumes this year. And for once, they’re inexpensive and easy to make yourself– a cardboard container,…
Review: The Equalizer
I’ll say one thing for The Equalizer — it’s not as violent or as hard to watch as I thought it would be. I realize that’s not a ringing endorsement, but when you hear that Denzel Washington and director Antoine Fuqua have teamed up again, as they did in the brutal Training Day, and you…
Review: This is Where I Leave You
Finally! A film that I can recommend to both my septuagenarian mother and my teenage niece. This Is Where I Leave You is a warm, entertaining, dysfunctional family film that fits comfortably between the gross and outrageous slapstick of an Adam Sandler pic, and the overwrought, over-acted, self-important emotionalism of August, Osage County. I read…
Review: Men, Women and Children
No one hits a home run every time he or she steps up to the plate, not even mighty writer/director Jason Reitman, who has brought us winners like Thank You for Smoking, Juno and Up in the Air. I think it’s safe to say that although he really tried to make a statement about our…
We'll Miss Neil Patrick Harris Over in Sherman Oaks
It looks like singer/dancer/actor host Neil Patrick Harris and his family will be spending more time in their Harlem brownstone now, since they recently sold their traditional two-story home in the hills of Sherman Oaks. Long standing conventional wisdom about L.A.’s entertainment industry residents says that movie stars live south of Mulholland, and TV stars live north of Mulholland,…
Shark Tank Gets a Spin-Off
Woo Hoo! My favorite reality show is getting a spin-off. That’s right, I dare use the words “favorite” and “reality show” in the same sentence. Shark Tank, where successful business “tycoons” bid or don’t bid to fund businesses that clever entrepreneurs present, is a breakout hit for ABC on Friday nights (not traditionally a successful…
Review: A Walk Among the Tombstones
Ring Ring “Hello…” “Honey, it’s for you! It’s Liam Neeson. He says he will find you, and wants to negotiate a kidnapping…Like we haven’t heard that before.” Like we haven’t seen almost everything in A Walk Among the Tombstones before. I mean, really, how many times must we endure Neeson playing the former law enforcement officer…
Review: Fort Bliss
I admit that military movies are not usually my thing. The ravages of war are just too severe for me—they almost always graphically depict hundreds of people getting blown up or shot, and no matter if they’re the “good” guys or the “bad” guys, I just can’t get over the fact that they’re somebody’s parents,…
