If you’re looking for one last vacation before school starts, “Beast” takes the audience to South Africa on a treacherous adventure. Depending on your expectations, this made-for-TV movie delivers predictable thrills, and suspense and functions mostly like a watered-down “Jurassic Park.” Baltasar Kormákur is a hit-or-miss director, with surprising nuance in thrillers like “Adrift” (2018), […]
This is a western where you might feel “wrung dry” by the end. It’s a bit of a spoof on westerns in general, but it is also serious in demonstrating that black faces were ubiquitous throughout the post Civil War west, even among the cowboys. The subject of the movie, Nat Love, was actually a cowboy sometime
It takes a creative, fanciful mind to dream up a story about such a motley group of characters (all prisoners) charged by the U.S. Government with dismantling a Nazi-like prison and laboratory in a foreign country, Corto Maltese. Although The Suicide Squad does have drama, it’s also very funny. Amanda Waller as director of the Suicide squad and researcher
Tom Hooper’s film version of “Cats” the musical is as bizarre as it is confusing. The adaptation has suffered greatly upon rollout, stemming from visual effect backlash when the characters were unveiled. The concept of taking actors’ faces and digitally inserting them into this amalgamation of human/cat bodies is the kind of peculiar you stare
There are striking similarities between Chastain’s Miss Sloane from last year, and her buzzy new film Molly’s Game. Both leading characters are unapologetic, powerful and in control of the men around them, while being investigated for illegal activity. Oscar winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) makes his directorial debut here with a fast talking,
Disney is working overtime, trying to convince audiences that the third installment of Marvel’s “Thor” is better than the previous. With five appearances as the God of Thunder, Chris Hemsworth (“Ghostbusters”) gets a new look, inventive director Taika Waititi injects life to the franchise and the cast is more impressive than ever. However, only so
Israeli director Hany Abu-Assad might have missed more romance survivor films than he should, before undertaking The Mountain Between Us. There’s a lot of good work in the middle of this film, particularly thanks to Oscar winner Winslet (Steve Jobs, The Dressmaker) and Idris Elba (The Dark Tower, Beasts of No Nation). The remote isolation
The long-awaited Stephen King adaptation The Dark Tower is a disaster on nearly every level. The most confounding part of it is how any movie with Elba and McConaughey could be this bland. The “McConaissance” has officially ended. Looking at the selection of King novels adapted to the big screen, there are more duds than
The rebooted franchise started to slip with Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), the new had started to wear off, I believe I said. Star Trek Beyond, with new director Justin Lin of the Fast & Furious, feels more like an episode rather than a motion picture event. While Beyond certainly gives you the bang and
Disney is on a quest to bring to life all of their classic animated stories. Last year Cinderella got the live action treatment, now Jon Favreau leaves superheroes behind to direct the classic story of a young boy raised by animals. Of course this isn’t the first attempt, it was given a live action treatment