Movie Review

Daniel Day-Lewis is Lincoln. In a long life I have seen only a handful of actors who in a handful of films so completely encompass their characters that I forget it's only acting. Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump comes to mind. The recent Time Magazine cover story on Spielberg's new film claims that after the acclaimed director tapped the acclaimed actor for the title role, Day-Lewis insisted on a year's hiatus to study the acclaimed president he would play.

"Cloud Atlas" is an epic in concept, screenplay, casting, directing, cinematography, editing, sound and production design. "Cloud Atlas" is akin to the Hollywood epics of Cecil B. DeMille.

"Cloud Atlas" recalls what big studios films do best and yet it's an indie film at heart, albeit one with a $100-million budget. "Cloud Atlas" shows us new ways of looking at the world, and new ways of thinking about the universe.

This is bold, ground-breaking cinema. It's the kind of film you may need to and want to see more than once. "Cloud Atlas" is cinematic poetry.

"The Master" is one of those films that audiences and reviewers either love or hate.

Since I try not be a "hater," put me in the category of "strongly dislike" regarding "The Master."

My opinion has to do with "The Master" writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, whose films are fascinating and confounding mish-mashes of big ideas, intriguing characters and performances connected by often incoherent storylines and punctuated by shock-value scenes.

Forget about the trouble with the chair.

There's no trouble with Clint Eastwood in "Trouble with the Curve."

Eastwood is as delightfully cantankerous as ever as an elderly baseball scout named Gus who still pours over stacks of newspapers rather than log onto the computerized "Moneyball" statistical analysis approach to assess high school, college and other Major League Baseball prospects.