Film – Chuck Koplinski

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 […]

As the Disney money machine continues to roll along, so does its series of live-action remakes of the animated classics.  What with The Jungle Book, Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast proving to be major hits – and all quite good as well – the Mouse House is going to continue this line of attack […]

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 […]

There were advanced screenings scheduled for Focus Features’ Captive State. They were cancelled. Commercials and trailers for the film were few and far between and the film opened last week with no advance reviews and little fanfare. Of course, these are all signs that the movie in question is one the studio has little faith […]

If your tastes run towards Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Neil Jordan’s Greta is likely to be your cup of tea. This nasty little dark comedy effectively taps into the paranoia of the abduction thriller, doing so with a distinct twinkle of the eye and tongue planted firmly in cheek.  Much of this is due to Isabelle […]

As the ambitious 22-movie cycle that Marvel Films initiated 11 years ago winds down, it seems right to pause for a moment to reflect on how groundbreaking this undertaking was. This series has brought in more than $17.5 billion at the global box office.  Let that sink in. Other studios have attempted to duplicate the […]

The Knight family is a bunch of characters. The father, Ricky, has been a wrestling aficionado all of his life, so much so that he began training his children, Zak and Saraya, in the fine art of the grappling hold and pile driver at an early age. He transfers his dream of being part of […]

Based on the series of books by Cressida Cowell, Dreamworks’ How to Train Your Dragon adaptations have been a success both at the box office and critically.  Having taken in over $1.1 billion globally, the first two entries have a 95 percent average approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  This really is no surprise, as the […]