It’s that time of year again. Some cinephiles spend Christmas arguing about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie (it is, and if you disagree, who cares if other people wanna watch it at Christmas?) Others stick with traditional holiday fare while others look for something even darker, a Christmas themed horror movie like Once […]
If The Hitman’s Bodyguard had come out 20 years ago, it might have seemed too generic in an age that was really pushing boundaries for action movies like Face/Off and Speed. Today it’s a refreshing return to old school movies where the strength of the actors’ chemistry and some thrilling stunts were enough to make […]
I wish I had known that Kidnap was exactly the kind of high concept of movie I crave. I’m fine with a Halle Berry Taken vehicle but the marketing did not convey that Kidnap is almost entirely a road movie. This is the sort of simple high concept that hooks me when done well. She’s […]
Noel Wells’ voice has been sorely missed from Saturday Night Live and the second season of Master of None, so it’s great to get 90 unadulterated minutes of Wells in Mr. Roosevelt. Wells writes, directs and stars in her feature film directing debut. Emily (Wells) is a struggling sketch comedy actor in LA. She returns […]
I need not have worried if the Annabelle franchise would give director David F. Sandberg as much room to play as his original film Light’s Out, which also premiered at LAFF last summer. In Annabelle: Creation, it seems the relative limitations of a possessed doll only inspired him and screenwriter Gary Dauberman to push the […]
Transformers: The Last Knight picks up where Age of Extinction ended, with Optimus Prime flying into space to meet his creator. It also picks up with Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) and introduces a bunch of new characters. In trying to connect all five films while moving forward, The Last Knight is all over the place […]
Inconceivable is not a Princess Bride spinoff unfortunately, but a Nicolas Cage starring throwback to ‘90s thriller may be the next best thing. I do admire the wordplay here. Angela (Gina Gershon) literally cannot conceive a child on her own and Inconceivable becomes The Hand That Rocks the Cradle with a surrogate! Katie (Nicky Whelan) killed […]
The original Planet of the Apes films were a cautionary tale about what could happen if mankind is not careful. Should evolution take a different course, animals could become the dominant species and perhaps they would be as inhuman to us as some of us have been to them. The all time great twist ending […]
I have a lot of issues with Spider-Man: Homecoming. Get it? Issues, like issues of a comic book. But really, this movie has a lot of problems. Spider-Man: Homecoming could be a fun story about a kid discovering his new super powers. It’s just someone else’s powers. Iron Man’s, specifically. That suit that Tony Stark (Robert […]
Making a movie out of Baywatch sounds like a joke. If you’re actually going to make that movie, you’d better have a damn good take on it. Baywatch doesn’t seem to care if people think it’s bad, so it won’t be disappointed, but it also doesn’t seem to know it was supposed to do something […]
