Film Reviews

R | 1h 56min | Action, Biography, Crime | 10 August 2018 (USA) I’ve been thinking about prison a lot lately. Because Keith Raniere, leader of the sex-trafficking cult NXIVM, was my grade school classmate. He’s currently awaiting trial at the infamous Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, the hell on earth that former politician Anthony Wiener’s […]

R | 1h 47min | Drama | 27 July 2018 (USA) Following hot on the heels of “Eighth Grade,” an ode to middle-school-lack-of-cool, comes “Hot Summer Nights,” an ode to too-cool-for-school, tragic youth. Like “Eighth Grade,” it might quickly become another high-school-ish, nostalgia-ridden, instant American film favorite. Remember growing up, that one crazy kid, known […]

R | 2h 14min | Action, Crime, Thriller | 20 July 2018 (USA) Is Denzel Washington’s character in “The Equalizer 2” perhaps Prince T’Challa’s non-vibranium-enhanced, black-ops-agent uncle? I think so. Actually, the real question here is: Is agent Robert McCall secretly using vibranium, but director Antoine Fuqua is hiding that fact from us? Because agent […]

“Searching” is a new psychological thriller that is scheduled to air on Aug. 3. It is about a widowed father, David Kim (John Cho), looking for his missing daughter, Margot Kim. After Kim calls the police, a local detective Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing) is assigned to assist him. However, 37 hours later, they still have […]

R | 1h 34min | Comedy | 13 July 2018 (USA) Do you remember eighth grade? I have good memories, but the quiet-but-potent “Eighth Grade” reminded me how much I’d forgotten the sheer pain of it all. Middle school is a rite of passage—a pilgrimage, or an odyssey, trying to get to the Land of […]

PG-13 | 1h 42min | Action, Crime, Drama | 13 July 2018 (USA) Dwayne Johnson stole my acting career. Twenty years ago, not a day went by without some kid running up to me and shouting, “Could you beat Hulk Hogan??” I’d play along and shout back, “Yeah!!” And some little 6-year-old would clench his […]

“Christopher Robin” is a new heartwarming, live-action, family-friendly American film based on “Winnie the Pooh.” As a young boy Christopher enjoyed adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood with a band of stuffed animals: Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore, Piglet, Rabbit, Kanga, and Owl. However, he is now a lost adult focused on his life, work, and family […]

“The Spy Who Dumped Me” will be in theaters on Aug. 3. This American action comedy is about two best friends in their 30s who live in Los Angeles. Audrey played by Mila Kunis and Morgan  played by Kate McKinnon, are thrust into an international conspiracy because Aurdey’s ex-boyfriend is a CIA agent. They decide […]

Tom Cruise is famous and tenacious about performing his own stunts. In Mission: Impossible –  Fallout, also known as MI6, Tom Cruise spent about one year preparing for a stunt in an aerial chase where he needs to fly like a professional pilot without any assistance in the helicopter. Paramount Pictures recently released the featurette […]

R | 1h 30min | Biography, Drama, History | 13 July 2018 (USA) Storywise, “Shock and Awe” could have been a contender; it could have been great. The problem is, it comes too close on the heels of “Spotlight” and “The Post,” two crackling newsroom dramas that, long after 1976’s “All the President’s Men” had […]

G | 1h 25min | Animation, Adventure, Comedy | 8 July 2018 (USA) Everyone knows The Beatles, but what about their cartoon movie “Yellow Submarine”? Not really. Not anymore. So in preparation for this 50th-anniversary re-release of “Yellow Submarine,” here’s a wee history lesson: “Yellow Submarine” originally came out in 1968, smack dab between the […]

R | 2h 2min | Action, Crime, Drama | 29 June 2018 (USA) So, the Mexican border wall? “Sicario 2” is obliquely about that wall and makes a decent case for building one. The original “Sicario” (2015) was an under-the-radar hit, a mule-kick actioner about the nightmarish, MS-13 gang-populated drug cartels on the U.S.–Mexico border, featuring […]

PG-13 | 1h 58min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi | 6 July 2018 (USA) For a lightweight comic book movie, “Ant-Man and the Wasp” addresses some seriously profound esoteric and scientific issues. We’ll get to those later. Suffice it to say, the second installment of the “Ant-Man” franchise, under the giant umbrella of the Marvel Studios […]

1h 30min | Drama, Mystery, Thriller | June 29, 2018 (USA) Alice (Ruth Wilson) grew up on a Northern Yorkshire sheep farm. Now, she’s seeing the world via the international sheep-shearer circuit—lots of sweating, bleating, b-a-a-a-h-ing, and cascading wool. Then, news that her father (Sean Bean of “The Lord of the Rings”) has gone to […]

PG-13 | 2h 8min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi | 22 June 2018 (USA) Just yesterday, in the men’s room, this 6-year-old Chinese boy, washing his hands, suggested to me (apropos of nothing): “Triceratops!” I quickly countered with “T. rex!” He said, “Stegosaurus!” I said, “Carnotaurus!” He said, “I don’t know Carnotaurus.” I said, “Aha! Oh, […]

PG-13 | 1h 50min | Action, Comedy, Crime | 8 June 2018 (USA) Hollywood recycles, composts, and grows new story-gardens. It retrofits, jury-rigs, jerry-builds, and cobbles. Take the “Ocean’s” franchise: exit the dudes, bring on the ladies. What do we get? An exchange of the bad-boy nouveaux Rat Pack for bad-girl high fashion. Is it […]

PG-13 | 1h 37min | Drama, Music | 8 June 2018 (USA) One of life’s most confusing situations for young people is figuring out that one’s dominant talent in life might not be the deciding factor in finding one’s life’s work. As they say, vocation is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s […]

PG | 1h 58min | Animation, Action, Adventure | 15 June 2018 (USA) “The Incredibles” has always been the rootin’-tootin’-est and most engaging of all the superhero franchises. The original “Incredibles” debuted 14 years ago, predating Marvel’s “Iron Man” by four years. It’s top-shelf largely because Disney’s Pixar, at this point, is pretty much synonymous […]

PG-13 | 1h 34min | Documentary, Biography | 8 June 2018 (USA) “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” in my day, was the butt of many jokes. When I got to college in 1978, there was a “National Lampoon” comedy bit circulating in the dorms that had Mr. Rogers as a child molester, with parents trying to sign […]

PG-13 | Comedy | 18 May 2018 (USA) “Rage against the dying of the light,” said poet Dylan Thomas. An understandable sentiment, to be sure. But I wonder if he’d take that to include meaning, say, that elderly ladies should read “Fifty Shades of Grey” and get exceedingly hot and bothered by S&M soft porn? […]