HOLLYWOODLANDbyGil Mansergh The narrator said he was more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings at a single bound, but actor George Reeves (TV’s Superman) wasn’t faster than the speeding bullet that ended his life. Ben Affleck is very good as the ersatz man of steel, and Adrian Brody is perfect as the dogged detective investigating the actor’s supposed suicide in “Hollywoodland” a fictionalized investigation of the actor’s … Read More »

Gil Mansergh’s Cinema ToastNEW RELEASES 9/29/06 The Guardian (PG-13)Kevin Costner, Aston KutcherDirected by: Andrew DavisThe helicopter versus ocean rescue sequences are as exciting as those in “Perfect Storm,” but the in-between stuff (aka the plot) is so by-the-numbers predictible, that you might think it was a parody if it weren’t so rah-rah Coast Guard sincere.2 pieces of flippered hero toastOpen Season (PG)Voices of Martin Lawrence, Debra MessingDirected by: Roger … Read More »

Gil Mansergh’s Cinema Toast NEW RELEASES 9/22/06 All the King’s Men (PG-13)Sean Penn, Jude Law, James Gandolfini, Kate Winslet, Anthony HopkinsDirected by: Steven ZalllianThe 1949 version of this biographical portrait of larger-than-life Louisiana governor Huey P. Long, earned an Oscar, but there’s not the slightest danger of this disjointed, poorly written, overloud movie to be nominated. Sean Penn seems to have fixated on one newsreel of Long with his arms flapping like … Read More »

Gil Mansergh’s Cinema ToastNEW RELEASES 9/15/06The Black Dahlia (R)Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Mia KirshnerDirected by: Brian DePalmaA-list actors and director raise the bar on this one–perhaps a bit too far. Based on an Elmore Leonard novel about a real murder case, it wants to be this millennium’s “Hollywood Confidential,” but even doused in the director’s signature gallons of blood, LA’s most famous unsolved murder … Read More »

Gil Mansergh’s Cinema ToastNEW RELEASES 9/01/06 The Protector (R)Tony Jaa, Petchthai Wongkamlao, Jackie Chan, Directed by: Pracha PinkaewThe fight scenes are bone-crushingly masterful, but they can’t overcome the lame (or actually nonexistent) script about a Thai marital artist who travels to Sydney, Australia where everyone he meets seems to be Thai and has a phobia against actually shooting their guns.1 and 1/2 pieces of violently unscripted toast Crossover (PG-13)Anthony Mackie, … Read More »

Gil Mansergh’s Cinema Toast Following along with my fellow Argus Courier bloggers theme regarding “what I did this summer, you can check back to the blogs from 7/7 and 7/20 to read about my sojurn to the Canadian Rockies. But another thing that happened repeatedly this Summer (and late Spring) is that studios increasingly refused to offer pre-release screenings of new movies for criltics. Although studios say that it … Read More »