ALIEN: ROMULUS may be the strongest entry into the franchise since the original. Certainly, this taut thriller provides strong characters, and an even stronger sense of dread, concentrating on the horror of the unknown that turns out to be as unstoppable as it is homicidal. The high-minded philosophical musings found in PROMETHEUS, for example, are… Read More »
BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE
The bad boys are back and, despite pre-emptive acknowledgements about how time is catching up with Miami’s most bombastic comedy duo of cop partners, the action is as fresh and fun as ever in BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE. If the schtick between “sensible” Mike and buffoonish Marcus isn’t quite as fresh or fun, transmogrifying… Read More »
GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE
GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE begins with a lonely Kong suffering the pain of an infected tooth, and the loneliness of being the last of his kind. It’s a good place to start, and if the filmmakers had stayed with the big guy on his adventures, this would have been a much better flick.… Read More »
GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE
The important takeaway from GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE, and, if one is being blunt, the only reason for it to exist, aside from those delightful miniature Stay-Puft marshmallow imps, is the delightful discovery that Kumail Nanjiani may very well be the cinematic heir of Bill Murray. Certainly, they are the only ones who consistently seem to… 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 »
SCREAM VI
The Scream franchise is not one that wants to be taken seriously as a straight horror film. From the first iconoclastic installment so many years ago, its aim, it’s very raison d’être, was to call out the conventions of slasher films and then serve up a gory slashfest to an audience primed to laugh at… Read More »
HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA: TRANSFORMANIA
HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA: TRANSFORMANIA is a relentlessly obvious and overplayed exercise in draining the last dregs from a moribund franchise. Let me put it this way. Adam Sandler, not known for discriminating taste in projects, took a pass on this material that continues the saga of Drac, the vampiric proprietor of the titular establishment that caters… Read More »
MEN IN BLACK INTERNATIONAL
When a once profitable film franchise begins to fade, the studios that have reaped the benefits of same are left with little choice about how to handle it. With so much money at stake, both in ticket sales and ancillary merchandise on the line, they can’t just let it slip away with dignity. No, they… Read More »
STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI
Good and evil are inextricably entwined in STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI. It makes for a pleasing metaphysical subtext to a film with spectacular action sequences, pointed references to the political economics of the class struggle, and a character in Benicio Del Toro whose nihilism carries with it a whiff of Zen philosophy at its… Read More »
STAR TREK: BEYOND
The Star Trek franchise has never been about wondering how the intrepid crew of the Starship Enterprise would save the day against impossible odds. Rather, the suspense has always come from the struggle between hope and despair as they have battled aliens, space viruses, and their own inner conflicts to snatch victory from certain doom.… Read More »