Film – Chuck Koplinski

“Less is more” is a notion director Luc Besson has no use for. His penchant for excess is front-and-center in his latest, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, an adaptation of a French comic book that has more than a passing resemblance to the director’s 1997 cult sci-fi classic The Fifth Element. It’s […]

There’s no shortage of ambition on display where Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk is concerned. In replicating the evacuation of 400,000 Allied troops from Northwestern France in the late spring of 1940, the director doesn’t shrink from giving us the sort of spectacle and scale necessary for a story such as this. Neither does he skimp on […]

Without question, the special effects on display in the new series of the Planet of the Apes films are phenomenal. Using the latest in digital technology coupled with motion-capture performances, the sense of realism that’s created to bring the movie’s simian characters to life is unnerving and brings a sense of authenticity that the previous […]

“Amazing,” “astonishing” and “spectacular” are all adjectives that have been used to describe various comic book iterations of the famed web-slinger Spider-Man, and they certainly are apropos in relation to the latest big screen effort he’s in, Spider-Man: Homecoming. Having stumbled badly in the post-Sam Raimi-era with two “not quite there” efforts, Sony Pictures has […]

Most of the time, films fail to live up to the massive hype that surrounds them. However, that is certainly not the case with Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver. Coming off a rapturous reception at this years SXSW festival and touting a 100 percent fresh rating on the aggregate review website Rotten Tomatoes (that has since […]

Having put the dismal second entry in the series in its rearview mirror, Pixar’s Cars franchise is once again back in the winner’s circle with its third chapter in the adventures of the ever-boyish NASCAR racer Lightning McQueen. Foregoing the sort of misguided adventure that prevented part deux from gaining any speed, director Brian Fee […]

“Did she or didn’t she?” That’s the question that hangs over Roger Michell’s My Cousin Rachel, an adaptation of the Daphne du Maurier novel that’s long on atmosphere as well as tension, as the director doles out one key bit of information after another about the mysterious lead character, none of which seems to be […]

The wait was long, but it was worth it. Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman is an inspired breath of fresh air in the DC Comics movie universe, standing in stark contrast to the dark and grimy visions of Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Driven by a sense of purpose […]

I was hoping that perhaps absence would make my heart grow fonder where Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean films were concerned. After all, it’s been six years since On Stranger Tides, the last bloated entry in the series, clogged up multiplexes across the country, and I thought maybe it would be refreshing to see some […]

Stella Meghie’s Everything, Everything is the sort of movie that’s easy to scoff at. A tale of young love replete with improbable events and inexplicable actions, the film is one of extremes, mercurial in the way it changes tone and ridiculous in the situations it presents. Cutting to the chase, it’s perfect for the teen […]

What began as a simple haunted house story set in outer space has become an enigmatic, existential treatise on man’s place in the universe and his origins. Eager to fill their coffers once more with one of their most popular franchises, 20th Century Fox approached director Ridley Scott to revive the Alien series he helped […]

James Gray’s The Lost City of Z is cut from the same cloth of old-fashioned adventure films like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Man Who Would Be King, a rousing jaunt that finds one man willingly facing impossible odds and the disdain of his colleagues while trying to find a lost Amazonian […]