Cinemascoping

As far as I know, there was no great demand for a sequel to “Independence Day” and what with the many financial successes in his past, I can’t imagine that its director Roland Emmerich is in need of money.  Which leaves me asking, “Why was “Independence Day: Resurgence” made?”  It’s likely that you’ll be asking […]

Without question, Lady Susan is a woman to be reckoned with.  Sly, coy, flirtatious, gorgeous, she’s a master manipulator, adept at playing the victim whenever it suits her; she has no problem exploiting the chivalric mores of her age, willing to be saved from any of her many dilemmas.  However, any man who comes to […]

His considerable talent wasted on Furious 7, director James Wan is back in familiar territory with The Conjuring 2,  an effective if overlong thriller that contains many of the elements that have become hallmarks in the filmmaker’s work.  Just as in the Insidious series and the previous entry in this franchise, a family is in […]

By its very nature, falling in love is a transformative act.  The newly besotted tends to look at life, themselves and others in a myriad of different ways when Cupid’s arrow finds its mark.  Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster takes this in an intriguing new direction as it looks at our perception of love […]

Having already brought in $103 million overseas, Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Apocalypse hits the states with a full head of steam at the box office and, curiously, a myriad of middling reviews.  Why this is so is a bit of a mystery as the film, as we’ve come to expect from anything helmed by Singer, is […]

Sometimes, an artist is so close to his or her subject that objectivity becomes a casualty.  Such is the case with Lorene Scafaria’s The Meddler.  While the film is meant to be a tribute to her father and the impact he had on her mother and herself, the result is simply a series of lightly comic […]

There’s no question as to what director Lorene Scafaria’s intentions were with her new movie The Meddler. “I wanted to make a movie about my father and the two women who loved him most,” she said during a recent visit to Chicago.  Needless to say, she accomplished what she set out to do as the […]

John Carney has a gift. Not simply in the way he uses music in his films and understands its power but how he’s able to create characters that on the surface could be dismissed as clichés but wind up having genuine heart and soul.  He’s also not afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve, […]

Director Jeremy Saulnier’s 2013 thriller Blue Ruin, was a film that effectively employed a long-fuse strategy to build a sense of dread. A simple revenge tale, it was the sort of movie that was perpetually overcast, both physically and thematically, one you knew would end badly, yet so compelling in execution that you had to […]

It would be hard to defend Ariel Vromen’s Criminal so I’m not going to try.  Right off the bat I will admit the film’s premise is something akin to what you’d find in a sci-fi comic book and the movie’s logic is so riddled with holes it makes Swiss Cheese look like a diary product […]

 What with 12 years having passed since the release of Barbershop 2: Back in Business, one would think that the “sell by” date for yet another sequel to Ice Cube’s surprise 2002 hit would have passed.  However, as even the most casual filmgoer knows, there is no statute of limitations where sequels are concerned.  Thankfully […]

Jeff Nichols is a director who doesn’t have to raise his voice in order to make a dramatic point.  One look at his excellent 2011 thriller Take Shelter, and you see a filmmaker out of step with the times.  This tale about one man wrestling with visions about the end of the world would have […]