Actresses over 40 often complain, or certainly used to, about the lack of good roles for them. That situation has improved, yet along with the good roles come others that are stupid or misguided, in my opinion, and this is […]
Continue reading »Category: Recent Releases
Eye in the Sky (2016) ☆ ☆ 1/2
Modern warfare is wholly different than it used to be, as evidenced by Eye in the Sky, in which suspected terrorists in Kenya are targeted for capture by British and American forces, and then as the situation escalates, termination. But this […]
Continue reading »Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) ☆ ☆
What a terrible title — “v” should be “vs.” (this isn’t a court case, after all) and there is no justice, either for Batman or Superman. The “Dawn of Justice” refers to the origin of the Justice League, which is […]
Continue reading »Deadpool (2016) ☆ ☆
I’ve always distrusted superhero movies, mainly because they are so arbitrary. Superpowers are like magic; the power is always present but the ways in which they are, or can be, used are as enigmatic as a scriptwriter’s imagination. Superman, for […]
Continue reading »Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2016) ☆ ☆ 1/2
The war in Afghanistan is the setting of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, the title being a military phonetic alphabet version of WTF, which sets the tone of the piece immediately. It’s kind of “MASH meets the 21st century,” with journalism and ambition the […]
Continue reading »10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) ☆ ☆
I really enjoyed Cloverfield, the 2008 monster movie in which New York City is decimated. The same people are behind 10 Cloverfield Lane, a different kind of alien invasion movie distantly related, sort of, to Cloverfield. While it isn’t bad, the new film […]
Continue reading »Eddie the Eagle (2016) ☆ ☆ ☆
Fact-based sports stories should be among the easiest to write and produce, one would think, since the facts, the subjects and the outcomes are publicly known. Sometimes they are and the results are spectacular — see Miracle (2004) or The Rookie (2002) […]
Continue reading »London Has Fallen (2016) ☆ ☆ ☆
As a purely escapist action movie London Has Fallen is exciting and fun. It isn’t as sharply focused as its predecessor, Olympus Has Fallen, but in some ways it’s even scarier. The story has global heads of state traveling to London for […]
Continue reading »Zootopia (2016) ☆ ☆ ☆
Disney animation had fallen behind Pixar’s quality and popularity but Frozen and now Zootopia are closing the gap. Zootopia is a kooky animal-based cop movie with terrific characters and a very political sense of how the world should be. It’s very entertaining […]
Continue reading »The Lady in the Van (2015) ☆ ☆ ☆
It is the people with whom we come in direct contact that most strongly influence us, often in ways we cannot control, or even understand. Such is the case illustrated by the British film The Lady in the Van. Residents along […]
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