Let’s get something straight about The Amazing Spider-Man, the franchise reboot from director Marc Webb of (500) Days of Summer fame. Comics, especially the new millennial generation editions, have no problems with reimagining and reconfiguring the continuity of these mythic characters.   

Seth MacFarlane's new movie Ted, a live action hybrid, finds him channeling just one character, an animated teddy bear brought to life by the wish of a young boy named John Bennett (Mark Wahlberg stands in as the adult body double) who longs for a best friend, a buddy to hang onto during the thunderous storms of life or toke up and watch Flash Gordon with during all of those in-between moments.  

Lola Versus starts with such promise: Lola (Greta Gerwig), on the beach, engaging in morning yoga while through voiceover informing us about life and the changes on the horizon. In particular, she alerts us to the fact that she (like most of us) is not good with change.  

With issues surrounding fracking, natural gas and oil dominating headlines recently, Josh Fox’s 2010 Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning documentary Gasland seems all too relevant. The film is two years old, but the stories presented in the film are now — more than ever — resonant with the people of Ohio.  

In a remote Lebanese village (hard to believe that such out-of-the-way places actually exist), Christians and Muslims live together, side by side, working and entertaining themselves as a community that is as close as family. Boys being boys joke and cross lines that are familiar to both sides, the men drink and eye women — although there is a sense of respect and honor truly from another time.   

Pulp — there it is again — the good cheap stuff is back and, not surprisingly, it has found its way onto the big screen. Jo Nesbø, the Norwegian bestseller trawling these murky shores, provides the basis for a solid anchoring with Headhunters.   

I have a question for Greta Gerwig, the odd naturalistic beauty who has bounded out of the Mumblecore underworld into the bright and glaring lights of mainstream attention, while still skipping back and forth across the great divide.   

Based on Deborah Moggach’s novel These Foolish Things, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel imagines a final adventure for a group of English men and women — one last hurrah where they can get away from the familiar day-to-day they’ve come to know all too well, or their busy families caught up in living in the digital now, which in some cases is hopelessly unknowable to their elders.   

Sometimes a film event comes along that is so special, we owe it to our readers to present the review in a form fitting the auspicious nature of the release. That is certainly the case with Rave Theater’s regional screenings of Yellow Submarine, a classic that will unspool, likely for the last time, in theaters.  

Why does Bob Marley — the man and his music — still resonant more than 30 years after his death? That’s a question director Kevin MacDonald tries to unpack in this straightforwardly rendered, often fascinating documentary about the Reggae legend.   

Whit Stillman creates a place that seems hermetically sealed off from the rest of the world — cinematographer Doug Emmett notably bathes the proceedings in unnaturally bright light — a place that posits the major problem in contemporary social life as “the tendency to always seek someone cooler than yourself” without a whiff of irony.  

Back in 1963, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby probably didn’t have as much trouble creating Earth’s Mightiest Heroes as Hollywood has had in bringing these super duper dudes (and one dark and mysterious dudette) to the screen.    

The beginning of May has heralded the dawn of summer at the box office for nearly a decade, which means that by now, thanks to the rise of the movie trailers, we are all overly familiar with the blockbusters of the season. Marvel’s The Avengers kicks things off for the superheroes, with The Amazing Spider-Man and The Dark Knight Rises to come.  

To say that we need to address the topic of bullying in our schools, communities and society at large should mean that the Weinstein Company’s efforts to drum up controversy (and publicity) surrounding their battle with the MPAA over the rating of Lee Hirsch’s documentary, Bully, have worked.    

Midnight Madness swept the Toronto International Film Festival last year and the clear winners were the audiences who saw The Raid: Redemption, the martial arts actioner from writer-director Gareth Evans. The Raid introduces Rama, a rookie SWAT team officer prepping for his first full-scale assignment, an early morning raid on an apartment building that serves as the stronghold for a ruthless drug lord.