RECOMMENDED: Yes, it’s already out, and no, we haven’t seen it. But we should all head out and catch Star Trek: Into Darkness this weekend, before J.J. Abrams actually invents time travel and makes us all go back and see it in theaters anyway. Alternately, watch Sherlock on Netflix, because Benedict Cumberbatch is a ridiculously [...]

As you know, the source material here, my friends, is the meat and potatoes of American Literature, the yardstick by which many of us are taught about the very concept of such a thing. At my alma mater, Hemingway & Fitzgerald was a 200-level class that never had to worry much about enrollment; it was [...]

RECOMMENDED: Superhero movies are hitting a wall. They’ve been ruling the box-office for years now, and while people still turn out to see them in droves, they’ll need to adapt and shake off the trappings of the genre to still get critical respect. Iron Man 3, which features a directorial switch from the first two [...]

NOT RECOMMENDED: No. Just no. ALSO NEW IN THEATERS: Mud, a Matthew McConaughey-starring drama, pulling in stellar reviews, in not quite wide release but a whole lotta places; The Big Wedding, where Allentown’s own Amanda Seyfried does the rom-com thing with Katherine Heigl, who is to these dumb movies what Fabio is to romance novels; [...]

RECOMMENDED: Ken Loach is our kind of guy. Through a career spent making pictures that embody a kind of British social realism that we could only wish for an American correlative, he has, time and again, illustrated that the system is rigged and that the struggle of the little guy is a noble one indeed. [...]

RECOMMENDED: James McAvoy, Vincent Cassel and Rosario Dawson star in Danny Boyle‘s Trance, about an art world dude who gets mixed up in some nasty business. I’m not sure if we mentioned it before, but VINCENT CASSEL is in this movie. ALSO NEW IN THEATERS: 42, which, er, maybe you don’t wanna see; The Place [...]

RECOMMENDED: Just when you were wondering, “What’s the FRENCH CANADIAN contribution to the cinema of today (and no, Celine Dion does not count because she is not a movie)?,” comes Starbuck, a little movie that, if you let it, will crack you up, pull your heart strings and remind you that those filthy savages are [...]

RECOMMENDED?: Well, blockbuster season is (kinda) upon us, with the opening of G.I. Joe Retaliation. Mind you, this movie was supposed to come out a long time ago, but then Channing Tatum got real famous and he was supposed to die early on in this movie so the filmmakers called a mulligan and re-shot almost [...]

RECOMMENDED: Oh hey, guess what: While so many of us have been blowing the last two decades chatting online, drinking microbrews and having the same discussions as literally everyone else, Michel Gondry has been casually re-inventing the nature of narrative itself in a way that is, and I am not saying this lightly, absolute fucking [...]

RECOMMENDED: We’ve been wondering aloud in the last few Film Sweat columns here about when the winter-time slog of underwhelming releases will end. And even though we are nearing the earlier-every-year start of the summer movie season (Iron Man 3, the year’s first real blockbuster, comes out in less than two months), we aren’t out [...]

RECOMMENDED: This week, we’re leaning towards the Philly-filmed, NYC-set Dead Man Down. While we’re typically fairly hesitant of any new Colin Farrell film that isn’t In Bruges 2: Electric Brugeloo, the local scenery gives it the edge, especially when the only other film hitting wide release this week is … ALSO NEW IN THEATERS: Oz [...]

RECOMMENDED: Full disclosure: We didn’t see any of the films this week. We’ve been sick/busy/underwhelmed by every movie coming out in the last two months. We’re sorry. Forgive us? Cool. Now let’s pretend you couldn’t get all of the following information from a simple search (Bing it!). Based on reviews alone, your best bet this [...]

NOT RECOMMENDED: “I’m on vacation!” Does the thought of Bruce Willis saying that while getting his action-hero on in Russia make you chuckle? It better, because he drops that line about a half-dozen times over A Good Day To Die Hard‘s 97-minute runtime. But Bruce Willis doesn’t say that, you say, John McClane does. We [...]

(NOT NECESSARILY) RECOMMENDED: We’ve got nothing to say, so we’ll just leave that there. ALSO NEW IN THEATERS: Steven Soderbergh‘s Side Effects, a film about prescription meds and the effect that can have on the psyche of the mind as CHANNING TATUM CHANNING TATUM CHANNING TATUM. Sorry, he’s just so distracting and out of place [...]

RECOMMENDED: Well, it was bound to happen sometime, and we’re shocked it took this long, but please welcome Warm Bodies, our first wide-release zombie rom-com. The promos for the film, from Jonathan Levine (50/50), make it look like the kind of half-assed genre-mashing retread that we’re used to seeing hit screens and fail spectacularly both [...]

NOT RECOMMENDED: The Farrely Brothers are the Weezer of filmmaking: They started out relatively strong, but since then have released the same lowest common denominator crap almost yearly, with no signs of switching that system up. That being said, the Peter Farrelly produced/partially-directed Film 43 has us very, very confused. Here is an incomplete list [...]

RECOMMENDED: Ladies and gents, we are in the midst of the Great January Film Dump, that annual post-award-contention time where production companies dump all of the films that they aren’t really that high on. It happens every year. You don’t believe us? Look at next week’s offerings (Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, Movie 43, Parker). [...]

RECOMMENDED: We won’t pretend like you don’t already know: Gangster Squad is meant to be a steaming pile of movie poo. (And hey, look, it is!) But like greasy fast food, sometimes this is what the appetite requires. Will you be sated by Sean Penn‘s Oscar-the-Mobster-Grouch voice? Will you, like us, find everything about Ryan [...]

RECOMMENDED: Already hailed as one of 2012′s best films (it spent some time in limited release before the calendar changed), Kathryn Bigelow‘s Zero Dark Thirty is about — in case you’ve been under a rock for the past year or so — the hunt for and subsequent killing of Osama Bin Laden. It’s been a [...]

RECOMMENDED IF YOU’VE GOT NOWHERE TO BE: Hey, did you guys see Lincoln? Wasn’t Lincoln great? Yeah, it was long, and felt a bit longer, but boy was it something. Do you guys want to see Django Unchained? We really enjoyed it, but MY GOD DID IT FEEL LONG. Just know that going in. Make [...]