Film – Chuck Koplinski

Robert Zemeckis’ Allied is a film that is concerned about appearances, both in terms of its characters as well as the production itself. Artifice is what drives the film in terms of locale, its two gorgeous leads, and what binds its two protagonists together – although both of them begin as spies, you’re not quite […]

Having already earned their bona fides in rendering earthbound heroics and taken the first step towards intergalactic adventure, Marvel Studios now introduces another aspect of their shared universe by dipping its toe into the realm of the supernatural. Dr. Strange, the 14th movie in the company’s superhero franchise, follows much the same pattern as the […]

On May 1, 1945, the unthinkable occurred. Attempting to take a ridge on the island of Okinawa, the 1st Battalion of the United States Army suffered massive casualties due to heavy enemy fire. Refusing to let his fellow soldiers die on the battlefield, medic Desmond Doss returned again and again, under fire, to where they […]

Not since Conrad Veidt played the monstrous somnambulist Cesare in the first horror film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, has an actor sleepwalked through a film the way Tom Cruise does in Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, an unnecessary, by-the-book sequel that’s nothing more than a pastiche of every action film cliche you’ve come to […]

I remember my grandmother had an Ouija board and it was something we kids pulled out at every family and holiday gathering, handling the tattered brown cardboard box with a sense of awe and respect that it ultimately didn’t deserve. Hoping to get in touch with the spirit world, my cousins and I would gently […]

Some movies make their intentions known from the start. Tate Taylor’s The Girl on the Train certainly falls in that category, as it sets out to keep the viewer back on its heels throughout most of its running time. That the film is based on a best-seller only complicates things for the director and screenwriter […]

Creatures who eat eyeballs to regain their humanity; children who are invisible or can turn you to stone with a glance or are lighter than air; and a sense of alienation felt by all. Yep, Ransom Riggs’ novel Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is right in director Tim Burton’s wheelhouse, as this tale of […]

Taking a break from traditional sports-based films (Miracle, Million Dollar Arm, McFarland USA), Disney and co-producer ESPN bring us a movie focusing on competition of a different sort with Queen of Katwe, a fact-based account of one young girl’s struggles to not only make it in the world of competitive chess but to free herself […]

Denzel Washington as Sam Chisolm and Chris Pratt as Josh Faraday in The Magnificent Seven. PHOTO COURTESY COLUMBIA PICTURES There’s much more to making a Western than putting movie stars under Stetson hats, giving them six-shooters and throwing them on a horse. This approach plus poorly choreographed sequences of extended carnage is all director Antoine […]

Kate Beckinsale as Dana in The Disappointments Room. Unless someone can come up with a fresh angle, I think there should be a moratorium put on haunted house movies. We’ve had ghosts scaring families that move into old creepy mansions, people who don’t realize they are ghosts, and folks who willingly identify with specters and […]

Tom Hanks as Captain Chesley Sullenberger in Sully. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Clint Eastwood’s Sully, but it certainly wasn’t what ended up on the screen. Anticipating a by-the-numbers “you are there” recreation of the events of Jan. 15, 2009, in which Captain Chesley Sullenberger was forced to land his Airbus A320-214 on […]

Chris Pine as Toby and Ben Foster as Tanner in Hell or High Water. PHOTO COURTESY CBS FILMS On the surface, the appeal of David Mackenzie’s Hell or High Water appears to be that it’s a revisionist western – far too few of these are being made – and features a performance from Jeff Bridges, […]