Knock at the Cabin M. Night Shyamalan is a filmmaker who should probably avoid the apocalypse. Whoever could forget his global warming horror “The Happening,” where a character stops in front of a moving lawnmower, or “After Earth,” which turned a sci-fi movie with Will Smith and Jaden Smith into a box office bomb? The […]
The Super Mario Bros. When I was a child in the ‘80s, I remember playing “Super Mario Bros.” on the first Nintendo. It was at a friend’s house he was my first buddy to get an NES and when I went home, I dreamed about it. The goofy plumber who jumps has been with me
Finestkind This film is like its main characters. They are best on the sea. The writer/director grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts where the film is set and worked on a boat that gathered deep sea scallops over 100 miles offshore for two weeks at a time like his subjects. We hear the sounds of
Guy Ritchie’s the Covenant Guy Ritchie almost seems to disown this large, bursting war movie set in Afghanistan called “The Covenant” for about the first half of its runtime. It transforms into something closer to the second half of its title, initially, it’s a thoughtful self awareness story about a tough American sergeant named John
Migration Some of you may have noticed that animated feature films hitting theaters this month have had an avian theme. First, there was “The Boy and the Heron,” which is Hayao Miyazaki’s latest movie and might be his last if he decides to retire, it would also be a good way for him to end
Napoleon A better movie to connect them is what Ridley Scott’s big-budget war epic “Napoleon” boils down to. It again shows Scott’s adeptness, but this time in the direction of a deeply uninteresting screenplay where every important event in the life of its subject comes across without enough passion or purpose and fails to link
Back to Black Only one question is invoked by Director Sam Taylor Johnson’s film “Back to Black,” and it will be recognized by any Amy Winehouse fan: What kind of f*ckery is this? The Camden born icon, played by Marisa Abela, was famously “just one of the girls.” She was down to earth, charming, funny
War Game Each day, people travel to Washington, DC from around the globe to see its historic sites. “War Game,” which starts with a man staring at the Capitol through his windshield and snapping photos of the Washington Monument, opens as a contemplative observer might document their visit on Instagram. They tell their passenger they
Evil Dead Rise As far as horror franchises go, “Evil Dead” is something of a miracle. There has yet to be a bad movie with its name on it. A great deal of that credit goes to series creator Sam Raimi, who’s so picky about who he lets play with his groovy blood soaked baby
Infinity Pool It’s a ticket buyer’s duty to see Brandon Cronenberg’s “Possessor” before any of his other films, if you ask me. It puts things in context. Once again the younger Cronenberg has made an extremely surreal and unapologetically violent and pornographic movie about privilege and morality and I don’t even know where to begin
