Peculiar Reviewer

This Christmas there won't be any warm and fuzzy elf socks to put on at the movies, as the Christmas Day releases will be more true to real life: family brawls, excess partying, escaped convicts, and boxing matches. So many good flick picks that you may have to give your family a rain check on the whole Christmas thing. Let's take a look at the Big 4: The Wolf of Wall Street , August: Osage County , Labor Day , and Grudge Match . 1. The Wolf of Wall Street Another rise and fall story from Martin Scorsese in his next one The Wolf of Wall Street . The true story of Jordan Belfort's rise in the 1990s to a wealthy stockbroker living it up, followed by crime and corruption, of course. This won't be a stretch for Leonardo DiCaprio - he already ran the '90s. Jonah Hill, Matthew McConaughey, and Jean Dujardin costar.  2. August: Osage County Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts . August: Osage County is based on the Pulitzer-winning play by Tracy Letts about the brok...

A brief playground fight leads to an awkward deliberation between the children's parents in Roman Polanski 's ( The Pianist, Chinatown ) delightful black comedy Carnage . Based on the play God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza, this film's bare bones dialogue and tense confrontation between the two couples is reminiscent of the masterpiece Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and Hitchcock's Rope. From the first glimpse of the credits zooming in on us, we know that all will be exposed, in due time. Kate Winslet ( Eternal Sunshine, The Reader ) perpetually delivers, and the perfectly cast John C. Reilly ( Cyrus, The Hours ) does classic-Reilly. Polanski, who is not shy with the up close(-up) and personal shots of his characters, has been able to capture perfect comic timing. I'm talking riotous. For a movie that takes place primarily in the same living room, you've got to have an absurdly talented cast to keep the audience interested. Carnage knows exactly what...