An amateurish script and even more amateurish directing completely destroys would could have been a competent tearjerker about a lifelong friendship that endures when one of them is diagnosed with cancer. Toni Collette’s performance is spot on, but even it fails to overcome the cloying, manipulative, by-the-numbers feel of this completely unbelievable film, which you […]
The latest outing by director David O. Russell and his muse Jennifer Lawrence is loosely based on the life of Miracle Mop inventor Joy Mangano, a creative go-getter who overcomes an unsupportive, dysfunctional family and legal challenges to invent the revolutionary mop that flipped her humdrum life into a roller coaster ride of highs and […]
Do you carry out an airstrike on a terrorist hangout where suicide bombers are strapping on their bombs, knowing it will likely kill the sweet little girl hanging out nearby? Such is the moral dilemma facing Helen Mirren and the late Alan Rickman (in one of his final roles) in this taut modern warfare thriller […]
This political drama/comedy is a noble effort to expose the manipulative, Machiavellian awfulness associated with political campaigns, but its execution, with Sandra Bullock as the dysfunctional campaign advisor to a Bolivian presidential candidate, falls flat and feels phony way more often than it connects.
Melissa McCarthy fans rejoice! This comedy – a raunchy, over the top James Bond spoof – is loaded with a slew of piss-yourself-from-laughing moments, when McCarthy, a CIA desk officer, goes into the field undercover, donning various kooky cat lady disguises to stop a nuclear arms sale. While some of the comic gags early on […]
At a time when some of us have grown tired of the predictable CGI-infused Marvel comic book movie blockbusters, here is a snark-filled, potty-mouthed send up BY Marvel, featuring Ryan Reynolds as unlikely anti-hero Deadpool, spouting a stream of expletives and tons of truly hilarious moments (the zamboni!), a masterfully mocking opening credits and a […]
A faux-Patriotic, mindlessly entertaining but utterly ridiculous display of terrorism porn that has a higher body count in the first half hour than all three seasons of The Walking Dead combined. The acting (Gerard Butler, Morgan Freeman, Melissa Leo) is way better than this super-lame script deserves.
This unoriginal, kid-friendly, Jumanji-esque fantasy adventure has the new teenage boy in town helping next door neighbor RL Stine (creator of the wildly popular Goosebumps children’s books, played by Jack Black) put all his monsters back in the pages of his books after an incident leads to their being released into the real world. Uh, […]
This psychological horror, based on actual stories from 1630 New England, follows a family exiled from their religious colony to a new, less Puritanical life of misfortune near an ominous looking forest. First time director Robert Eggers is meticulous with detail – from an effectively mundane, bleak setting, a sometimes hard-to-follow English dialect, and a […]
Kristoffer Joner and Ane Dahl Torp star in Norway’s first major disaster film, about a rock avalanche that causes a massive, fast-moving tsunami through the deep fjord leading to the picturesque tourist haven of Geiranger. And while this film has all the cliches and CGI special effects of a Hollywood blockbuster, this Scandinavian saga features […]