Film – Chuck Koplinski

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 […]

There are very few surprises in Nicholas McCarthy’s The Prodigy, other than the fact that it’s an effective little B-movie shocker that had me giggling with delight over just how much fun it is.   Hitting all of the expected horror film beats – this is really nothing more than a remake of The Omen – […]

I’ve spoken of tone before in other reviews – how hard it is to sustain over the course of a film, how difficult it is to maintain a consistent mood on a set over the length of a prolonged shoot, how it can shift and be lost from one scene to the next. Director Hans […]

The movie to beat for best film title of the year, Robert Krzykowski’s The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot, is a somber, pulp tale of a man left behind, a veteran whose deeds have gone unsung, unknown by the public he sacrificed so much to save.  Unfortunately, it isn’t quite as fun […]

I often complain that movie trailers give far too much away about the films they’re promoting, revealing key twists and surprises that not only undercut the work of the director in question but ruin the film-going experience for the audience. Apparently, research shows that for the most part, viewers like this approach; still, I bet […]

Comic book enthusiasts are very defensive of their favorite medium. They contend there’s much more to the superhero stories they love so much, and they’ll go to great lengths to explain this to you in detail if you have the patience to listen to them. The massive success of the superhero movie has only justified […]