SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY is a respectful and honest documentary about the actor who rose to fame as the Man of Steel and the accident that put him in a wheelchair. Using home movies and recollections by family members, it conveys both the profound courage Reeves showed in making himself a visible symbol of… Read More »
DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE
It is a fine line to walk, loving a pop culture phenomenon with all your being, yet being able to make mad sport of it at the same time. Thus is DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE, the ultimate fanboy and fangirl experience of the Marvel Universe that manages to be both wickedly funny and curiously reverent. Deadpool… Read More »
BLACK ADAM
Until now, BATMAN VS SUPERMAN has been the nadir of DC’s excursions into cinema. Now it has lost even that paltry distinction with the onset of BLACK ADAM, a film with much sound and fury that signifies nothing. Not even Dwayne Johnson, one of the most charismatic movie stars working today can right this shipwreck,… Read More »
THE BATMAN
One thing you can say about THE BATMAN without fear of contradiction is that there is a lot of it. Clocking in at three hours or so, it packs in enough plot for a trilogy, as though all concerned fretted that this might be their only shot at the rebooted DC franchise. Fear not, though.… Read More »
SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME
There is such a delicious and perfectly logical, surprise in SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME, that it alone would be worth the investment of your time and your money to see it in a theater. Fortunately, there is so much more to enjoy as Peter Parker (Tom Holland) and those in his orbit face a future… Read More »
BRIGHTBURN
What we have here is a dynamite premise fumbled in the execution. BRIGHTBURN gives us a strange visitor from another planet crashing to Earth as a baby and taken in by a good-hearted, infertile farm couple (Elizabeth Banks, David Denman) in the midst of baby fever. As with that other story of an infant from… Read More »
AVENGERS: ENDGAME
The stakes have been raised so many times with event flicks that, when approaching one, hope is always tempered with experience about what to expect, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson. With AVENGERS: ENDGAME, though, hope wins out. The spectacle is everything it should be, and the story, of necessity a meandering thing, is nonetheless sustained by… Read More »
SHAZAM!
There is a wondrously cheesy sincerity to SHAZAM! that makes its weak spots irrelevant. It is, in many ways, as pure of heart as its champion, and just as giddy about discovering that magic is real. Plus, there’s that flaming Santa running for his life during the climactic final face-off between good and evil.
GLASS
We learn many things in M. Night Shyamalan’s GLASS. We learn that the Philadelphia police department has an abysmal response time. We learn that a fully staffed psychiatric hospital has only two orderlies its employ. And we learn that James McAvoy still cries more manfully than any other actor working today. Possibly ever. He is… Read More »
BLACK PANTHER
BLACK PANTHER is the standard by which all other superhero movies this year will be measured. Maybe this decade. Showcasing the expected show-stopping special effects, a rich mythology from the Marvel comic on which it is based, and plenty of rousing action that is both imaginative (weaponized rhinoceroses) and genuinely suspenseful, it gets the most… Read More »