This film should have been named The Gunman, Straight Shooter and gone straight to DVD. That may have give too much away. Here are more free giveaways. This is a film that is exactly like a thousand others made in the last 10 years. Killing. Intrigue without anybody caring. Then more killing. Sean Penn stars … Read more
Disney already created the most popular and well-known animated Cinderella so you may wonder why they wanted to do it again in their second March 2015 release. First, forget animation. This version lets Disney show off the best of CGI in a lushly beautiful live action version of film with richness animation seldom reaches. With … Read more
Way back when Chappie had its first run of theatrical previews it appeared to be a benevolent robot story. There have been others: A.I. Artificial Intelligence, The Wizard of Oz, Forbidden Planet, Short Circuit and Bicentennial Man. All were well made and consistent, except for A.I. Artificial Intelligence – a rare Steven Spielberg misfire. As … Read more
Yes, this is both the year of the spy and the year of the abbreviations. Except for Kingsman, where they spell it out for us. Currently in theaters, Kingsman: The Secret Service starts The Year of the Spy off with a bang. Based on a graphic and very violent comic book, KTSS pays homage to … Read more
Within the first few minutes of Gods and Kings’ 140–minute running time, there’s a big battle in Memphis. Not about who has the best BBQ, but about who has the biggest and toughest army: the Egyptians or the Hittites. It’s 1300 BCE, and Pharaoh–to–be Ramesses II and Moses – played by Christian Bale of Batman … Read more
If there was an Oscar for Publicist of the Year, Kim Jong-un certainly deserves it for the record-breaking free publicity he garnered for The Interview – which also turned out to be a surprisingly clever and witty Seth Rogen/James Franco outing. (The film did win the Maxwell Weinberg Publicists Showmanship Motion Picture Award.) Since you … Read more
Boyhood is an Oscar contender that opened and then disappeared – in mid-August of last year, to be exact. However, the movie just won the Golden Globe Award for Best Film Drama. People are starting to notice, and Oscars may be in the near future. Boyhood is a coming-of-age story about Mason – played by … Read more
In the “envelope please” category, it”s time to consider some movies few have seen, but many may soon know about because of the upcoming Screen Actors Guild, Golden Globe and Oscar awards. First up is the dark comedy Birdman – not to be confused with Bird (1988), Bird (2015), The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) or … Read more
For the second time in a matter of months, Clint Eastwood has released an American masterpiece. Less than six months before the opening of American Sniper, he produced an Americana winner, Jersey Boys, about pop icons Frank Valli and the Four Seasons. Now, he takes on another type of American hero, Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. … Read more
The Imitation Game tells one of history’s greatest espionage stories: the race to break the German Enigma code during WWII. The Enigma cipher machine had 159 million permutations, and the Germans changed the code at midnight every day. It would take a lot of people to get the job done, and the British only had … Read more