Arguably the best Batman film since The Dark Knight.
Because sometimes you need a break from Oscar season.
I had sky-high expectations for The Lego Movie as a veteran player of their first several video games — both Lego Star Wars, both Lego Indiana Jones, both of Lego Harry Potter, the first Lego Batman, Lego Pirates of the Caribbean, and the most epic of them all, Lego Lord of the Rings. They’re inventive, unpredictable, witty beyond all expectations with a keen self-awareness that frequently lampoons the very intellectual properties they paid good money to license. And those were just the cutscenes.
The trailers for Now You See Me telegraph up front that you should expect a twist along the way. You’re teased and beguiled by the possibility of having the wool pulled over your eyes, and taunted for daring to look too closely. Sooner or later, this movie swears it will fool you.
As with most big-budget sci-fi films nowadays, many viewers will spend half the running time of the new Tom Cruise vehicle Oblivion mentally tallying how many refurbished components they recognize from other sci-fi flicks. That doesn’t automatically make the film bad in my book, but it can be a pervasive distraction that turns my viewing experience into one long Highlights for Children puzzle. (Score one point for every borrowed element you spot! If you spot ten or more, you’re a Certified Movie Maven!) Oblivion is the second feature film from Joseph Kosinski, the director of Tron: Legacy, which was a visual wonderland and a surprisingly classy act considering it was a Disney sequel to a film I’ve disliked since I was ten. 
During the solemn, lamentable weekend following last Friday’s senseless tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, Facebook users who were already struggling with their own reactions, the reactions of their friends, and the fights breaking out between friends of conflicting reactions all found themselves interrupted dozens of times over the course of the weekend by the reassuring face of Academy Award Winner Morgan Freeman, perceived as one of the kindliest, most grandfatherly figures in all of Hollywood. His face was attached to a short essay decrying the culpability of mass media in encouraging too many broken young men to become power-tripping mass murderers because of the seedy allure of posthumous headlines and ten minutes of front-page infamy. Few would argue with the content of the well-meaning essay, but this wasn’t just any old essay written by an ostensibly intelligent typist. This was an essay attached to a photo of Academy Award Winner Morgan Freeman. 
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 