Johnny Depp

REVIEW — ‘Transcendence’: It Thinks Therefore It Is

I like to say that this is the time of the year when the L.A.’s undertakers, wearing bird-beak masks from the Great Plague, make the rounds of Burbank and Century City ringing their bells outside the studio walls, crying, “Bring out yer dead!” Maybe there is crap all year long and I’m just sensitive to the fact that quality awards fare won’t be around for another six months. Whatever the reason, there’s no denying that Wally Pfister’s directorial debut Transcendence is a corpse, DOA before the first ten minutes are over.

The problem certainly isn’t in the way the film looks. Pfister is Christopher Nolan’s DP; image is paramount.

REVIEW: ‘Closed Circuit’ Tinkers with Le Carré and That’s About All It Does

Labor Day weekend is by far the slowest of the long holiday weekends for the box office. Distributors know this, they’ve banged every drum and blown every whistle to try to change it, but it seems that a collective back-to-school/end-of-summer funk descends over audiences and they just won’t get their butts onto seats. Unless you are lucky enough to be in Telluride or Venice this weekend,