Cinemascoping

“I’m going to name my son after me so I don’t forget his name.” This is the sort of coping mechanism the veterans in Jason Hall’s impressive debut Thank You for Your Service are forced to employ when they return from active duty and take on their biggest challenge – reintegrating to the home front, […]

I ran into someone over the weekend who said to me, “We just came from seeing ‘The Snowman.’ With all the people in it, I didn’t believe it could be as bad as everyone’s saying it is.  Man, I was wrong.” Yes…yes he was.  With approximately 10 weeks left in the 2017 movie season, Tomas […]

 Imagine that you’ve served nearly three tours of duty in an incredibly dangerous warzone and when you return home, all that you thought you were sure of – your job, the relationship with your wife and that with your children – is put into question. You struggle to come to terms with all this and […]

There’s no question that Jackie Chan has lost a step or three.  Yet, he’s able to do things no normal 63 year-old man should.  You need no computer-generated effects in a Jackie Chan movie.  He’s his own special effect. None of the scenes from his latest, The Foreigner, will make the actor’s highlight reel, as […]

I sometimes wonder why actors and actresses chose to appear in the movies they do.  I’m sure some choices are made because of the size of the paycheck they’re getting, others are done in the hopes of vying for an Oscar, while some are done to increase their brand or name recognition.  And then there […]

In 1887, as part of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubliee, the monarch received two Indian servants to honor the occasion.  One of them was Hafiz Mohammed Abdul Karim, a 14 year old who was the son of a hospital assistant.  Over time, Victoria came to like and trust this young man, going so far as to […]

A couple of years ago, an article appeared that claimed that there were no more movies stars.  The contention was that putting any actor or actress’ name above the title didn’t sell tickets anymore, but that franchises and pop culture roles, superheroes in particular, were the real draw.  The author felt that it didn’t matter […]

There’s a sense of anticipation in Mike White’s Brad’s Status, one that unfortunately is never realized.  The writer/director’s previous films – among them The Good Girl, School of Rock, Year of the Dog and Beatriz at Dinner – all showed a sense of inventiveness, humor or a willingness to deviate from the norm.  As such, […]

Timely and smart, Michael Cuesta’s American Assassin proves to be a worthy successor to the Jack Ryan films.  Based on the novel by Vince Flynn, the author’s spy du jour, Mitch Rapp is the star of 16 different political thrillers, so there’s more than enough material to draw from and with Dylan O’Brien (Teen Wolf, […]

Director Geremy Jasper may have been concerned about many things while making his debut feature Patti Cake$ but actress Danielle Macdonald wasn’t one of them.  For the title role he needed a confident young woman who could spit rhymes with ferocity and speed, while getting the audience to identify with this rough-around-the-edges young woman who […]

Timing is everything in life, as well as the movies, and it certainly works against Patrick Hughes’ The Hitman’s Bodyguard,  a standard actioner that contains a few too many scenes that hit close to home where the recent terrorist acts in Europe are concerned.  Seeing explosions rip apart a building in a major metropolitan area […]

There’s an “almost, not quite” quality to Taylor Sheridan’s Wind River, a thriller with great potential that gets lost thanks to its oblique narrative.  It surely isn’t a lack of talent on the screen that’s to blame as the cast assembled is first rate.  The script by Sheridan, who penned last year’s Oscar-nominated Hell or […]