Weekend Box Office (12/23/12): Hobbit tops, Jack Reacher leads new releases in pre-Christmas pile-up.

 As I have been warning about for months, 10,000 releases all opened in this very weekend , with another 5,000 coming on Tuesday.  Let's...

2012 in film: The female-driven blockbuster is no longer a surprise, no longer written off as a 'fluke'.

2012 isn't just the year where we saw one female-starring and/or female-centric blockbuster after another.  2012 was the year when such ...

How Zero Dark Thirty's unflinching objectivity opens the film up to simplistic accusations of ideological partisanship.

Spoiler warning, I suppose... There is going to be a lot of debate over the next few months about just where on the political divide Kathryn...

Better roles for child actresses than adult actresses? Jennifer Lawrence graduates to 'adult' roles by playing the token girlfriend/manic pixie dream girl.

Yes, this started as deleted material from my Silver Linings Playbook essay from Saturday. I don't want to get into another 'roles...

Review: Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty (2012) is a powerful tale of the costs of 'justifiable' violence.

Zero Dark Thirty 2012 150 minutes rated R by Scott Mendelson Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty ( trailer ) is a refreshing 'just th...

Review: Lawless (2012) is a generic and often dull macho crime drama that works only as right-wing propaganda.

Lawless 2012 115 minutes rated R by Scott Mendelson Twenty years ago, a film as formulaic and frankly contrived as John Hillcoat's Lawle...

John Gosling previews the week's new film releases (08/31/2)

It's another mixed bag at the box office this weekend, with serious drama and horror tussling with a brand new family film. With last we...

Preferential Patriotism: The strange "politics" of Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty.

There isn't too much to say about this brief teaser. The title is guaranteed to confuse a good 90% of general moviegoers and I'll b...

John Hillcoat's Lawless gets a just-plain fun trailer.

Let's not pretend that this looks like high art just because it has a terrific cast and a period-set American crime story at its center....

The not-so subtle negative messaging in Jessica Chastain's Iron Man 3 character description.

The big casting news from yesterday was the announcement that Jessica Chastain is being sought for a major role in Iron Man 3 , joining Guy ...