Chuck Koplinski

It’s a testament to the novel by Lew Wallace that the power of Ben-Hur cannot be completely obscured by shoddy filmmaking.  That was my take away after sitting through the sixth screen version of the biblical epic, an adaptation that shifts the focus of the story and delivers its message with the subtlety of a […]

Having helmed a remake of Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead which was greeted with either great derision or unbridled admiration, director Fede Alvarez decided he would take his time before embarking on his next movie. Not consciously seeking inspiration, it came to him when he and his friend screenwriter Rodo Sayagues were spit-balling ideas while […]

I went into David Lowery’s Pete’s Dragon skeptical about what it had to offer; little did I know that this frame of mind would be in keeping with that of many in the movie itself.  This re-do of the 1977 Disney feature has very little in common with the original in terms of tone and […]

Thanks to the phenomenal success of CBS’ The Big Bang Theory, Simon Helberg is a familiar face in millions of homes around the world.  As Howard Wolowitz, the luckiest engineer in the world (he’s married to Melissa Rauch’s Bernadette Rostankowksi after all), the actor has been able to hone his comedic timing and amass a […]

There’s not much to Jason Bourne, the fifth entry in Universal Pictures’ spy franchise.  To be sure, it resembles a movie and passes as an action film by today’s standards, which is pretty low indeed.  There’s little in the way of story, nothing resembling character development and were it in cahoots with the company that […]

There’s nothing really new where Woody Allen’s 48th film, Café Society is concerned and that’s fine.  While other directors are certainly guilty of covering the same ground more than once (John Ford – Westerns, Alfred Hitchcock – Thrillers, etc.) it certainly didn’t detract from their overall quality or entertainment factor of their work. That’s certainly […]

There’s never a moment where you feel as though the Star Trek crew is going through the motions in their latest big screen adventures Star Trek Beyond, though there is a sense of familiarity to it all.  Three films into the reboot of the exploits of the original crew, director/producer J.J. Abrams has successfully mined […]