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Spectacle film-making with a purpose, Everest is a welcome throwback to the testorone-heavy adventure flicks of past decades. Based on the true story of the tragic May 10-11, 1996 excursion to the summit of the world’s highest peak that resulted in the deaths of eight mountaineers, it’s an epic man-versus-nature story that reminds us of what happens when … Continue reading
The epitome of the failed genre mash-up, American Ultra probably played better on paper than it does on the screen. The idea is sound — stoners turn out to be super-agents and wackiness ensues — but the passion is so lacking and the execution so slack that it feels like everyone involved wanted to be somewhere else. … Continue reading
Adapting a TV series to film is usually a recipe for disaster, and dropping a dated spy-fi franchise in late summer between the twin juggernauts of Mission: Impossible and James Bond is something akin to a box office suicide mission; that said, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. beats those odds. It’s a brisk, smart, fun action … Continue reading
Fox’s latest stab at the Fantastic Four movie franchise was hobbled early on by bad buzz, lack of fanboy interest, and rumors of behind-the-scenes conflicts. The good news is that writer-director Josh Trank’s take on Marvel’s original superteam isn’t the worst comic book movie ever made; the bad news is that it nevertheless sucks. It’s … Continue reading
After the one-two punch of Mad Max: Fury Road‘s art house approach to action movies and Ant-Man‘s low-key thrills, it’s tempting to expect Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation to feel un-hip and outdated two minutes in. It comes as a pleasant surprise that the series’ cartoon spy-fi lunacy still plays, that leading man Tom Cruise can … Continue reading
Amy Schumer and Judd Apatow do the world a long-overdue favor by zinging the hell out of the ubiquitous “Professional Woman Who Tries to Have It All and Find Romance in the Big City” rom-com formula, and do it with style, wit, and energy. The trope has been ripe for subversion for some time, and Schumer … Continue reading
It doesn’t re-invent the superhero movie or reach heights of Marvel’s top movies to date, but Ant-Man deserves its due: It’s more fun than a movie about a guy who shrinks and communicates with insects theoretically should be. That’s not intended as a backhanded compliment. Marvel’s capstone for its so-called Phase Two slate of films is well-timed, … Continue reading
Time travel — ugh. Terminator Genisys, the latest installment of the humans vs. robots saga, riffs heavily on elements from the first two James Cameron-helmed movies in the series and largely (and wisely) ignores the third and fourth movies. It opens with humanity’s defeat of Skynet in the post-apocalyptic future, the discovery of the malevolent A.I.’s last-ditch … Continue reading
If there was ever a movie that didn’t need a sequel it was Steven Soderberg’s Magic Mike. That’s not to say that Soderbergh’s 2012 film was a failure or a flop; quite the opposite in fact. A pseudo-biographic dramedy loosely based on its lead actor Channing Tatum’s brief career as a male stripper, it caught viewers off-guard with … Continue reading
Jurassic Park hit theaters way back in 1993 at just the right time — Michael Crichton’s novel, which had become an instant bestseller three years earlier, was perfect for film and big-budget blockbusters hadn’t yet become over-saturated in CGI effects. Much has changed since then, so much so that one has to ask how a premise as … Continue reading
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