Irrational Man, Mr. Holmes

Irrational Man

Mr. Holmes





Murder is fun in Woody Allen’s “Irrational Man,” which takes a while to get revved up but builds great comic momentum – and an inexorable logical argument for selective homicide as a societal good – in a special last half-hour that relegates the trifling “Magic in the Moonlight” to evanescent memory.

Aloha

Please tell me not every major American director will feel the need to decamp to Hawaii for a navel-gazing loll in the hammock.

Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

In the oddly punctuated "Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)," Michael Keaton plays a Hollywood has-been named Riggan Thompson taking one last stab at seriousness as a Broadway hyphenate, pouring the last drabs of his comic-book movie fortune into a Raymond Carver adaptation and watching - with half desperation, half resignation - as it threatens to crumble before opening.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Almost all the joy that Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone brought to the rebooted "The Amazing Spider-Man" two years ago has been sucked out of the fun-free zone that is "The Amazing Spider-Man 2," which makes up in volubility what it lacks in coherence and dramatic thrust.

Gangster Squad

The new year starts with a bang – zillions of ‘em – in “Zombieland” director Ruben Fleischer’s postwar-L.A. “Gangster Squad,” an unexpectedly pleasurable entertainment made with copious amounts of humor and a lightness of spirit never hinted at in the trailers.