Film – Chuck Koplinski

While Warner Brothers has stumbled badly in creating its own shared universe of superhero movies and Universal Pictures’ efforts to do the same with its famous stable of monsters is getting a reboot, Legendary Pictures has been quietly constructing a series of interlocking movies – a la Marvel Films’ game-changing, juggernaut franchises – that is […]

When you have to write stories on a consistent basis for the same character, you’re bound to run out of ideas.  After cranking out tales for Batman, Spider-Man and their respective stable of characters for over 20 years, DC Comics and Marvel Comics both ran into this problem and handled it in similar ways.  The […]

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before. Two high school students are intent on finding a party that all of their peers are going to.  Unfortunately, they don’t have the address and in trying to find this get-together, they get caught up in one outlandish situation after another before finally getting to the soiree. […]

In the classic Hollywood musicals starring Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, it wasn’t uncommon for them to use props as they danced.  In addition to their partners – which included Jerry the Mouse on one occasion – they utilized canes, chairs, hats and whatever other useful objects that might be at hand and would hoof […]

On the surface, Deon Taylor’s The Intruder is nothing more than a home invasion thriller akin to Pacific Heights and Unlawful Entry, thrillers from the ‘90s in which yuppie landlords were terrorized by tenants or trespassers who were the basis for Benjamin Franklin’s old adage about guests and fish.  Yet, coming as it does midway […]

I have a feeling that Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen will not go down in cinematic history as this generation’s Hepburn and Tracy. Yet based on their recent collaboration, Long Shot, I’d be willing to watch another film or two with them. These seeming opposites have a genuine chemistry between them that makes you believe […]

With legendary rapper Ice Cube as his father, O’Shea Jackson, Jr. is no stranger to the world of movies, as he often visited the sets where his dad shot his many films as a child.  He’s also no stranger to living in the shadow of his famous father, something that was heightened when he made […]

Expectations couldn’t be higher for Marvel Films’ Avengers: Endgame, arguably the most anticipated movie in film history.  Having already broken pre-ticket sales records before one frame has flickered on the screen, there’s no question that parent company Disney will turn a tidy profit on this endeavor.  Still, there’s a great deal riding on this movie […]

I don’t know how to say this without it sounding condescending, but if you don’t read Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, then you simply won’t get Neil Marshall’s new version of the demonic superhero’s adventures.  While you have to admire the filmmaker’s adherence to the source material (with Mignola as one of the producers he may have […]

“Sometimes, dead is better.” So says Jud Crandall (John Lithgow), uttering a piece of advice he doesn’t take in Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer’s remake of Pet Sematary.  They should have applied this notion to their own misguided project, as sometimes certain movies are better dead.  The original 1989 version was no great shakes, and […]

The 2007 announcement that Iron Man would be the first superhero film based on a Marvel Comics character other than Spider-Man was met with a great deal of head-scratching among comic book aficionados.  Tony Stark’s alter ego was not the most well-known in the company’s stable and to pump millions of dollars into a big-screen […]

The worlds of art and sports are littered with filmmakers, authors and athletes who have fallen victim to the sophomore slump, having wowed the world with their debut only to fail to live up to expectations the second time around.  The perils of setting the bar high with your opening salvo on the public stage […]