Film – Chuck Koplinski

John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Gallagher Jr. in 10 Cloverfield Lane. Put 10 Cloverfield Lane in the “almost, not quite” file, what with it being a film that straddles two genres yet only succeeds in achieving half of what it sets out to do. Covering some of the same ground as Room, 10 […]

Tina Fey as Kim Baker in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. PHOTO COURTESY Paramount Pictures More times than not I’ve liked Tina Fey more than the films she’s been in. Baby Mama and Date Night were hit-and-miss affairs, their best moments saved by the comedienne’s deft timing, while Sisters, though very funny, conveyed the sense that she […]

Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps from Zootopia. PHOTO COURTESY Walt Disney Pictures’ What with the makers of Wreck-it-Ralph and Tangled at the helm, it should come as no surprise that Disney’s Zootopia is the clever, cute and timely movie that it is. While not quite at the level of the usual Pixar fare, what with […]

Anya Taylor-Joy as Thomasin in The Witch. PHOTO COURTESY A24 Likely to disappoint hardcore horror fans, Robert Eggers’ The Witch is a thinking-person’s fright flick, a work that has more to do with the stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne than anything that might have happened in the Blair Woods. There’s little in the way of gore […]

Casey Affleck in The Finest Hours. There’s something charming and reassuring about the old-fashioned quality of Craig Gillespie’s The Finest Hours, a throwback to movies of yesterday. It has no problem putting not one but two solid, erstwhile heroes front and center, drawing on untold reserves of courage to conquer seemingly insurmountable problems. There’s also […]

A scene from Kung Fu Panda 3. PHOTO COURTESY DREAMWORKS PICTURES By the time the third entry in most film franchises is released, much of what made the movies in question distinctive and fresh has gone by the wayside. There’s a labored quality to what’s on the screen, and what was once inspired has become […]

Rooney Mara as Therese Belivet and Cate Blanchett as Carol Aird in Carol. In adapting Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt, director Todd Haynes takes the refreshing approach of looking at the era of repression that was the 1950s through a modern lens. Rather than give us a Douglas Sirk-like exercise, much as he […]

Leonardo DiCaprio as Hugh Glass in The Revenant. Among experts of the era of western exploration of the United States, the legend of scout Hugh Glass is well known. Having been attacked by a grizzly bear in 1823 while on an expedition in South Dakota for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, he was left for […]