With a new title, marquee names on the poster and no jigsaw puppet, “Spiral” is a reboot of sorts to the “Saw” franchise (2004-2017) that ran out of steam around its third installment. Technically, “Spiral” is the ninth film in the franchise, and while there is new blood in front of the camera, director Darren […]
Despite writer, director, producer and star Elizabeth Banks (Pitch Perfect, Love & Mercy) proving there is a bit more mileage in a franchise that’s been around since the 70’s; Charlie’s Angels newest revival is still an unnecessary commodity. Nearly a decade since Barrymore, Diaz and Lui first rebooted the original TV show, Banks version is
If you go back and watch the three previous Men in Black films, you will find they always defeat the alien’s but lose the battle against time. When “Men in Black” debuted back in 1997, it had a formula that worked during that era of filmmaking and Will Smith was at the top of his
It’s a generational thing as all three “Shaft” men come together in the third installment of the movie series that dates back to the ’70s. Samuel L. Jackson who has built a career on playing Shaft-type characters was the optimal choice to bring the foul-mouthed detective back to the big screen in 2000. “Barbershop” director
There are no “do-overs” in life, so why should horror movies be the exception. This new version ignores decades of other sequels that feature Michael Myers, positioning itself as a direct sequel to the original. I guess it took them 40 years to get it right? David Gordon Green (“Stronger”) is the director behind the
Roger Ebert said, “No one can play Lara Croft like Angelina Jolie”. It turns out, he was right. Academy Award Winner Alicia Vikander (“The Danish Girl”) has struggled to find her place in Hollywood after winning such acclaim at an early age. The “Tomb Raider” reboot or prequel, is the first film to sit squarely
The best news about the third Spider-Man reboot (now in the hands of Marvel, still a product of Sony like the previous five installments), is they forgo the origin story. No spider bite, no dead uncle, we’ve been origin story’d to death with these reboots. Director Jon Watts (“Natural Selection”, “Cop Car”) takes a cue
Here is another example of a studio taking a director with little to no experience and shoving him behind one of the summer’s biggest tent-pole action flicks. Of course, we already know from previous experience that “A Tom Cruise movie” means he is the real voice behind the film. If that wasn’t enough, Universal 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;
Only when Ice Cube stepped in for part 2, did this fledgling excuse for a franchise slightly improve. Now that Fast & Furious commodity Vin Diesel (aka this generations Schwarzenegger/Van Damme) is popular again, his mediocre investments are being rebooted. This film in particular and almost everything Diesel is involved with, is pure sensory and