This one is getting a lot of critical notice – Rotten Tomatoes aggregate score of 98% positive: “Bolstered by a strong performance from Matthew McConaughey in the title role, Mud offers an engaging Southern drama that manages to stay sweet and heartwarming without being sappy.”
Rolling Stone TRASHES new Tom Cruise flick, “Oblivion” — “Earth is a garbage dump. Alien wars have left the future in ruins. The remnants of humanity have taken refuge on a space station. A pair of unlikely lovers are assigned from on high to do the robotic work of reclaiming vital resources and maybe saving the planet. OK, that’s the plot of Pixar’s WALL-E. Minus the animation, it’s also the motor that drives Oblivion . . .”
“Director Antoine Fuqua made a great film in Training Day (2001), but here settles for passable pulp. Die Hard (1988) is obviously the model, and Olympus Has Fallen reminds you just how wonderfully balanced John McTiernan’s film was: Bruce Willis’s cocky nonchalance, Alan Rickman’s slithery charm, the whipcrack action scenes, the ever-ratcheting tension. Fuqua doesn’t come close to matching that, and Butler is a little short on quips to leaven the violence. But it rattles along with no little vim, and there is one excellent joke about the difficulty of finding a computer’s hash key when time is tight.”
The staid New Yorker’s (not so surprising) take on the upcoming raunchy antics in the movie, “Spring-Breakers“ – “Like a spume of beer hosed across bare flesh.” Damn, those guys can write!
