“America” is conservative author Dinesh D’Souza and filmmaker John Sullivan’s de facto sequel to “2016: Obama’s America,” their hit 2012 political film that became the second-highest grossing documentary of all-time but failed to thwart the president’s reelection. If that movie’s objective (other than profit, of course) was to unseat a sitting president, this one aims for something […]
Review: “America” (2014) Read More »
In sports, there is nothing as singularly saddening as watching a fiery and determined star athlete try to singlehandedly save a game—or a season—from the failings of the lackluster team around them. Kobe Bryant puts up 40-point games almost just to spite the mediocrity he has recently been forced to deal with; Tom Brady throws
Review: “Maleficent” Read More »
“Edge of Tomorrow” could (half-) jokingly be titled “Groundhogs and Aliens,” but that doesn’t mean one should take it lightly. Tom Cruise’s latest would-be blockbuster is the kind of summer movie we need more of but see progressively less of, an elaborate actioner with a brain that combines its special effects with a story that
Review: “Edge of Tomorrow” Read More »
One of my most vivid childhood moviegoing memories is when my dad took me to see “The Waterboy” starring Adam Sandler. I was nine, and I laughed and laughed and laughed, probably harder than I ever had before. Critics panned the movie, but they weren’t part of the ideal audience. I was — old enough to “get”
Review: “A Million Ways to Die in the West” Read More »
“X-Men: Days of Future Past” is, pardon the pun, a marvel of comic book franchise filmmaking. It’s not only a strong (possibly the best) entry into the “X-Men” line, but one that carries all of the emotional and thematic weight of the series with it, turning the previous installments into the cars of a freight
Review: “X-Men: Days of Future Past” Read More »
One of the worst things a superhero movie can do is gobble up its running time with multiple under-realized plots, included to cram in as many odds and ends of the source material as possible, that scramble to amount to something substantial in the final minutes. “The Amazing Spider-Man 2”—or “We Already Remade One Sam
Review: “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” Read More »
Marvel Studios, under the direction of Kevin Feige, has discovered the ideal mold with which to make a superhero movie. Sure, things were rough in the beginning: While “Iron Man” was a rousing success, “The Incredible Hulk” and “Thor” were ambitious messes at best, and “Iron Man 2” was a very high-profile black mark on
Review: “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” Read More »
Last year, writing about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s then-latest film, I wrote, “‘The Last Stand’ isn’t an action movie, a comedy, a crime thriller, or a Western. It’s an Arnold, the smallest genre in cinema. Arnold Schwarzenegger is arguably the only post-silent era actor whose participation mandates that a film be thought of as something other than
Review: “Sabotage” Read More »
Would you like to see a sequel to a film that concluded with the vast majority of its principal cast ending up, rather unquestionably, as nourishment for fowl? Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures sure think so! The fact that there is a follow-up to “300,” the film that cemented Zack Snyder as the premiere director
Review: “300: Rise of an Empire” Read More »
Liam Neeson’s late-career transformation into the ass-kicking headliner of big-budget B-movies, jump-started by 2008’s smash-hit “Taken,” has been as welcome as it was unexpected. Who, a decade ago, would have guessed that the then-52-year-old actor, having just shaken off the image-tarnishing “Star Wars: Episode I” with an Academy Award nomination for his dignified portrayal of
Review: “Non-Stop” Read More »
