new on DVD: ‘Home of the Brave,’ ‘Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq,’ ‘Meet the Robinsons,’ ‘Fido,’ ‘Mr. Brooks’

See it: • Home of the Brave [buy it]. From my review: Sure, it’s earnest — sure, it’s melodramatic. Yup, it’s just barely this side of being a made-for-Lifetime TV soaper. But there’s a mesmerizing power to this little film that comes from its sheer un-told-ness, from its right-now immediacy. There’s none of the irony … more…

my week at the movies: ‘Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,’ ‘This Christmas,’ ‘Dan in Real Life,’ ‘Slipstream,’ ‘War/Dance,’ ‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’

I have this friend who looks a lot like Philip Seymour Hoffman. My friend used to live in NYC but he moved to L.A. a few years back, and since he’s been known to pop back into town unannounced. And more than once I’ve been walking down a Manhattan street and caught a glimpse of … more…

movie-ku #36

And since you didn’t get a haiku yesterday — I was somewhat distracted — here’s another, the first in a series about my recently renewed and deepened addiction to British television. Call it a TV-ku… When TV’s so good It makes you think of fil-um: Nirvana for geeks

movie-ku #35

It’s Monday, which means the weekend box office numbers are out, and getting spun by the studios… Smash hit? What if those One million folks this weekend In fact hated it?

Gone Baby Gone (review)

It’s no rare thing that a film gets buzz for its director. It’s a rare thing when that director has never made a film before. It’s an even rarer thing when the film by that first-timer turns out to be as astonishingly confident and shrewd as actor-turned-director Ben Affleck’s *Gone Baby Gone.*

movie-ku #34

In honor of Gone Baby Gone, which I really like, and so does everyone else: Who’da thunk Affleck Could escape Damon’s orbit To kick movie ass?