The true story of a Marine who bonds with her German Shephard on a mission to Iraq could have been another cinematic animal failure like “A Dog’s Purpose” or “Max”. Documentarian turned film director Gabriela Cowperthwaite, keeps this war thriller and emotional drama away from melodramatics. “Megan Leavey” has similar beats to “Million Dollar Baby”, […]
The updated Baywatch is no longer set in California (or Hawaii), it’s been revamped to Miami Beach. “Are you Batman?”, Mitch Buchannon’s latest rescued survivor asks. “Yea, sure. Just bigger and browner,” he replies. The original show aired from 1989 until the early 2000’s, evolving with the times and jump starting a lot of careers
Ben Wheatley’s follow-up to High Rise is just as divisive. The entire movie takes place in a warehouse with a 90-minute shootout. Each of the characters, about 15 of them total, are split into two sides, like Battleship. We get brief introductions before they take sides and begin shooting at one another. The cast most
The ‘Fate’ of the series is secure. There will always be an audience for these films regardless of what implausibility they launch on screen or how poorly the actors deliver their lines. Universal’s mammoth franchise has even started to pull in Oscar winners like Charlize Theron (“Mad Max”) and Helen Mirren (“The Woman in Gold”)
Mine creates one of the most gut wrenching, impossible situations I’ve seen on cinema in a long time. The suspense in the first 26 minutes that leads us to a devastating situation is everything you expect from an action film putting the lead in dire circumstances. The big question is what happens next? You still
Stories like Ghost in the Shell are comic book and animated presentations for a reason. Their futuristic imagination is often beyond the capabilities of feature film, or certainly the creative ingenuity of what can and more importantly should be adapted into live action. Sadly, the lines of what is live action (real) and what is
This marks the 5th big screen adaptation of King Kong, and only twelve years after Peter Jackson (“The Lord of the Rings”) put him back on screen. Jordan Vogt-Roberts’s sophomore film is an enormous leap from the tiny independent movie “The Kings of Summer” (2013) to this nearly $200 million dollar monster flick. What works;
Aside from that embarrassing Cruise/Diaz action flop Knight & Day, director James Mangold has a solid track record working with actors. Both Angelina Jolie (Girl Interrupted) and Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line) won Academy Awards under his direction. Mangold was the ideal choice to close out the Wolverine saga, ending with Hugh Jackman playing the
Zombie movies are a dime a dozen these days, but this British production offers something slightly off the beaten path. Mike Carey’s novel and screenplay takes ideas from superhero films like “X-Men” and expects the audience to already know quite a bit of zombie history from other films. There is an appreciated balance here between
There is a wall in this film but it isn’t portrayed as anything great. In fact, the title of the film falsely suggests the wall as the focal point. It’s a fantasy epic which uses legend to explain the implementation of China’s famous five-thousand-mile-long wall. While The Great Wall is the most expensive Chinese film