Author Archives: Ryan Potter
Continuing with the dual director-actor role that brought him success with The Town (2010), Ben Affleck has hit another home run with Argo, a drama-thriller that recounts the daring CIA-backed rescue of six Americans who managed to escape the U.S. Embassy in Tehran as Iranian militants loyal to t...
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Don't go into Looper expecting to see a thinking person's time travel movie. If so, you'll be disappointed. But if you like your science fiction packed with suspense and action, then you'll love Looper. Featuring excellent performances by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Pierce Gagnon, and especially Bruce...
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Taking a filthy rich chauvinistic North African dictator, stripping away his identity in a pair of botched assassination attempts, and finding him roaming the streets of New York City as a “normal guy” might sound like the ingredients for an intriguing action thriller, but it’s actually the...
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It’s 1984 in a beautiful but impoverished small town on New Zealand’s east coast, where an 11-year-old who everybody calls Boy gets an unexpected visit from his long-absent father. Featuring two fine performances from unknown Maori child actors, Boy, writer/director and co-star Taika Waititi'...
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Don’t let the title fool you. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is not a documentary about globetrotting Western fishermen casting their rods in various Middle Eastern oases. Rather, it’s an entertaining romantic comedy/drama directed by Lasse Hallstrom featuring excellent performances from Ewan Mc...
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Jeff is 30 and lives in his mother’s basement. He’s unemployed, smokes too much weed, and hasn’t had a girlfriend since high school (surprised?). He’s a slacker in every sense of the word, but according to Jeff he simply hasn’t found his destiny yet. I’m guessing many slackers use the...
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Albert Nobbs is a strangely wonderful little movie about a strange little man named Albert Nobbs (Glenn Close), who isn’t a man at all but a woman disguised as a man to live a better life in 19th-century Ireland. Nominated for three Oscars (Best Actress – Close, Best Supporting Actress – Ja...
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You know the storyline all too well. A retired criminal must commit one last big crime before he can get out of the game for good. Countless authors and filmmakers have used this handy plot device, some more effectively than others. The bad news for Contraband, Mark Wahlberg’s latest film, is t...
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You know a horror film about exorcism is in trouble when the audience laughs during exorcism scenes intended to terrify you. But failure to scare is just one of many problems with The Devil Inside, an incredibly bad movie that will earn disgusting amounts of money due to savvy marketing, includin...
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Award-winning filmmaker Carl Colby’s latest documentary, The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby, is a personal quest to understand who his father really was. I interviewed Carl via telephone on Wednesday, December 7, 2011. He was gracious with his time and spok...
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Spying is dirty but necessary work, and legendary American spymaster William Colby was arguably the best in the business during the Cold War. Although his professional career culminated with a tumultuous stint as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1973-76, Colby made a name for hims...
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