Cinemascoping

Speaking about sharing the stage with Robin Williams at the legendary Improv comedy club in Los Angeles, Richard Pryor said, “There was nothing I could do.  I was up there, trying to keep up with him but I couldn’t.  His mind just works so fast.  I just ended up standing there, watching him.”  In many ways, this is the […]

Without question, Steven Quale’s Into the Storm makes its intentions known from the first as the opening scene features four teenagers being killed by a rogue tornado while trapped in a car. More a thrill ride than a movie, time-wasting elements like character development and narrative complexity are blown to the wayside as the intent […]

Rob Reiner’s And So It Goes is the sort of movie that, when someone asks you how it was, you’re likely to say, “It was OK.”  Not god-awful and certainly not good, it’s the sort of film that you forget by the time you’ve walked to your car in the parking lot after the final credits roll.  […]

Color me “surprised” in regards to Brett Ratner’s Hercules, an unexpectedly thrilling, smart and at times moving new take on everyone’s favorite demigod.  It goes without saying that they got off on the right foot by casting Dwayne Johnson in the title role but what’s most surprising is the intelligence found in the adaptation of […]

A vanity project if there ever was one, Zach Braff’s Wish You Were Here is far too calculated to take seriously and suffers from a sense of earnestness that’s so overbearing that the film ends up pushing us away rather than drawing us in.  All of the blame rests on Braff’s shoulders as he not […]

 What with Marvel Films dragging its feet where making a Black Widow feature is concerned, French filmmaker Luc Besson has taken matters into his own hands and given us Lucy, a star vehicle whose sole purpose is to let Scarlett Johansson shine.  To that end, the movie succeeds handsomely as the actress gets to kick […]

There’s a sense of justified rage that propels The Purge: Anarchy, a film that simultaneously serves as a cathartic exercise for its audience as well as a screed against the current state of societal affairs.  In shifting the focus from the first film from the Haves to that of the Have-Nots, writer/director James DeMonaco improves […]

One of the more successful franchise reboots, 2012’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes proved that there was a bit of life left in 40-plus year-old series.  20th Century-Fox knows you can’t keep a profitable ape down and has made no small plans where its simians are concerned, with a eighth film in the […]

The press notes and movie poster for Deliver us from Evil claim the film is “inspired by the actual accounts of a NYPD sergeant.” This is a good piece of information to have because if I didn’t know better I’d swear the movie was inspired by other much better horror films and police procedurals.  Ralph […]

Not sure if I am the only one but I’ve gotten tired of Melissa McCarthy’s shtick already.  Though having toiled in film and on television for over the better part of a decade, it seems as though the actress just arrived on the scene with her star-making turn in 2011’s Bridesmaids.  Since then, she has a […]