The one thing you can say about WICKED: FOR GOOD without fear of contradiction is that there is a lot of it. Not just the running time, which feels like so much more than 138 minutes, but in the Rococo exuberance of the production design. So much production design. It goes beyond mere attention to… Read More »
THE RUNNING MAN
In the 1970s, a simpler time, we had NETWORK, Paddy Chayefsky’s disturbingly prescient fever-dream of a black comedy about a television network run amorally amok thanks to a viewing audience with the attention span of a nudibranch and an alarming lack of critical thinking skills. We laughed and comforted ourselves that such extremes could never… Read More »
THE CONJURING: LAST RITES
It’s as though all involved with THE CONJURING franchise know that it’s running out of steam. Rather than just end it, though, they have devised THE CONJURING: LAST RITES, using that old movie adage of show, don’t tell, in order to give us irrefutable proof of same. This entry limps through its paces in a… Read More »
WEAPONS
It is a testament to writer/director Zach Cregger that the most ominous moment in WEAPONS, the one that does more than merely frighten, the one that is like an icepick to the brain has none of the gore with which the finale is replete. Instead, it is a POV shot from a distance of a… Read More »
THE FANTASTIC 4: FIRST STEPS
It is with no small measure of relief that I am able to say Marvel’s THE FANTASTIC 4: FIRST STEPS finally succeeds in bringing one of my childhood favorites to the screen. This iteration centers itself on the lively dynamics of the Richards-Storm-Grimm clan of biological and logical family such that the quartet’s greatest superpower… Read More »
SUPERMAN (2025)
SUPERMAN starts out wobbly, tasked as its first act is with as much exposition as might be found in a film exploring Superman’s origin story. Yet, like the Man of Steel himself, James Gunn wrenches his film from its tailspin and then zips it into a fine superhero tale full of action, thrills, nifty CGI,… Read More »
JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH
Right at the beginning of JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH there is a hint that this is a break from the increasingly lackluster sequels to which we have been subjected. It is the moment when we see that Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson), the upbeat mercenary of the piece, is recruiting paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) for… Read More »
THUNDERBOLTS: THE NEW AVENGERS
Among the many laudable things to be found in THUNDERBOLTS: THE NEW AVENGERS is the best exploitation of the natural consonance to be heard in the name Bob since Jim Jarmusch’s DOWN BY LAW (look it up, you won’t be sorry). In addition, what we have here is a big, splashy superhero flick that doesn’t… Read More »
SINNERS
Ryan Coogler has a great deal he wants to say in SINNERS, so much in fact that one genre would not be adequate to cover it all. Hence his treatise on the evils of racism and the oppression of religion encompasses an epic of magical realism that leaps off the screen with its boundless energy… Read More »
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
It was, perhaps, inevitable that there would one day be a big-screen adaptation of the wildly popular computer game, Minecraft. That being the case, we could have done far worse than A MINECRAFT MOVIE, a live-action extravaganza that will thrill the fans (and the kiddies) but leave the rest of us longing for more Jennifer… Read More »
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 39
- Next Page »