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 the Ayatollah Khomeini stormed the embassy on November 4, 1979, and ended up holding 52 Americans hostag...[Read More]

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 Willis and Emily Blunt. Writer/director Rian Johnson delivers an intelligent, m...[Read More]

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 plot of The Dictator, a new comedy starring Sacha Baron Cohen that features scenes of sheer comic genius alo...[Read More]

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’s coming-of-age story of a Michael Jackson-obsessed tween struggling to understand his slacker dad sh...[Read More]

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 McGregor and Emily Blunt. Dr. Alfred “Fred” Jones (McGregor) is an uptight and nerdy British fisheries expert...[Read More]

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 same excuse to justify their laziness, but I doubt any slacker alive is as obsessed with the M. Night Shyamalan mo...[Read More]

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 – Janet McTeer, and Best Achievement in Makeup), the film explores interesting questions about gender. Despite a ...[Read More]

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 that writer Aaron Guzikowski and director Baltasar Kormákur have pumped too many tiresome clichés into thi...[Read More]

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, including a catchy but misleading trailer and a “surprise” ending that ranks among the worst and most unsatisfy...[Read More]

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 himself thirty-plus years earlier as a decorated World War II soldier who led espionage activities behind e...[Read More]

You need to know this from the start – there are no negatives when it comes to The Descendants. The movie is a nearly perfect package. Yes, this is George Clooney’s greatest role (more on that later), but the other key pieces – supporting actors, writing, directing, cinematography, and music – all fit together like a customized glove to make writer/director Alexander Payne’s drama/comedy about a w...[Read More]