MEG 2: THE TRENCH is a wildly uneven effort, spending as it does most of its time as dud of an action drama and the rest as a rapturously unhinged action comedy. It is far more successful at the latter. Fortunately, star Jason Statham doesn’t let a creaky script (and that’s what we have here)… Read More »
HAUNTED MANSION
This is the not the first time that Disney has tried to cinema-ize its Haunted Mansion attraction. That perennial favorite got the film treatment 20 years ago with Eddie Murphy heading an indifferent story and a sentimental subplot that I found to be more interesting than anything involving Mr. Murphy. Alas, this latest attempt fares… Read More »
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE is pure entertainment. It is incontrovertible evidence that star/produce Tom Cruise understands the job description of an action star, giving us a series of breathtaking set pieces with (almost) painless exposition, and just enough plot to keep the whole improbable structure intact as it barrels along at near-light… Read More »
INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY
And so we come full circle in the Indiana Jones saga as Indy once again faces the Nazis, this time while going in search of the Dial of Destiny. It’s a bittersweet farewell (unless it makes enough money to tempt all concerned with another installment), rife with complicated action sequences that don’t all succeed in… Read More »
ASTEROID CITY
Wes Anderson’s ASTEROID CITY presents us a dream within a dream as it ponders our place in the cosmos by setting its story in three separate realities that bump into each other the way subatomic particles swarm around an atomic nucleus. Is it synchronicity or chance or some other cosmic law of which humanity is… Read More »
SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS
SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS is a big and bubbly adventure overflowing with wisecracks, mythical creatures and, for the good people who have taken in so many foster children, an explanation for why their house keeps getting hit by lightning. A worthy sequel to its original, it picks up with Billy Batson (Asher Angel) still… Read More »
65
65 is that most satisfying of CGI films, the type that doesn’t wallow in what it can do visually, but rather uses the technology in furtherance of a moving film. It posits a visit to our planet 65 million years ago by humans who arrive at a momentous moment for our big blue marble. The… Read More »
MISSING
Full of slick misdirections and clever plot twists, MISSING rises above the novelty of its online footage subgenre to take its place as a solid mystery-thriller. Not that it doesn’t take excellent advantage of the limitations of its chosen subgenre. Au contraire, it incorporates those very limitations as integral plot points. In it we find… Read More »
AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER
And so, after a gap of over 13 years, James Cameron returns us to Pandora with an introduction that posits the most dangerous thing about that locale is that you may come to love her too much. Cameron is quite obviously smitten with his mythical planet whose inhabitants, the 8-foot-tall Na’avi, are more in tune… Read More »
WOMEN TALKING
WOMEN TALKING is a compassionate, reasoned film about a very ugly subject that tells its compelling story within strict confinements. The action takes place among an Amish-like sect in 2010 as its women take on issues of the patriarchy with a fiercely clear eye and the safe remove of an almost metaphorical setting. Within this… Read More »
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