David Ayer, the screenwriter behind Training Day and Dark Blue, sets out to make his Life and Times of a Police Officer in South Central, complete with opening manifesto in voiceover. ("If you cut me, I bleed.") But he winds up with Cops for the younger generation. (Cops Jr.? Copz?) …
As Pixar gets digested by Disney, Blue Sky Studios steps up and takes its shot at the title for innovative animated storytelling. (The CG animation itself is pretty innovative as well, particularly when it comes to water, sunlight, and facial expressions.) The biggest success is at the level of emotion: …
Add a fourth to the angelic trio of Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael — Denzel. Washington reprises his role as McCall, the former CIA operative who now spends his time helping people in need: old Jewish men, middle-aged Muslim ladies, young black men, younger white girls, and oh yes, his friends. …
Add a fourth to the angelic trio of Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael — Denzel. Washington reprises his role as McCall, the former CIA operative who now spends his time helping people in need: old Jewish men, middle-aged Muslim ladies, young black men, younger white girls, and oh yes, his friends. …
You know what's bad? Prejudice. You know what's good? Artists, especially those who reject the square-peg jobs that society wants them to perform and who then go on to live in ways that defy pointless societal conventions, man. You know who needs to/can stand to hear this message? Cartoon-loving kiddies, …
Much of the viewer’s enjoyment of writer-director Dominic Savage’s tale of a desperate English housewife will depend on his or her sympathy for its outwardly comfortable, inwardly unsatisfied protagonist Tara (Gemma Arterton, her face a china-doll mask of misery). And much of that sympathy will depend on the degree of …
Love can make you do stupid things. Like, say, move from Canada to Colombia to help your hobbled brother build a shack/shop on the beach while you give surf lessons, then start dating a pretty local who happens to be the niece of the most powerful guy in town, then …
The opening text lets you know that prior to 1996, no one had died during a commercial expedition to the world's highest peak. So now you know what's coming. The first part of Baltasar Kormakur's version of the events recounted in John Krakauer's bestseller Into Thin Air serves to introduce …
The opening text lets you know that prior to 1996, no one had died during a commercial expedition to the world's highest peak. So now you know what's coming. The first part of Baltasar Kormakur's version of the events recounted in John Krakauer's bestseller Into Thin Air serves to introduce …
A cheerfully bullshit, oddly handsome daydream about the glories of pre-collegiate life (the three days before classes start, to be precise) in early ‘80s Texas. Why oddly handsome? Because the early ‘80s may not have been a pretty time, but writer-director Richard Linklater has buffed this particular cow patty to …
An overexplained nightmare: explanations are what this remake has in place of the anarchic whimsy of the original. Why are the pretty young people going to hang out at a creepy cabin in the woods? Because they're trying to help their friend quit drugs, and this is her childhood getaway. …
A bright young man at a fancy tech company (Domhnall Gleeson) gets picked to visit the company’s founder (Oscar Isaac) in his country home, er, homey concrete fortress. There, he is introduced to Ava (Alicia Vikander), a sweet and pretty robot who might just be the world’s first Artificial Intelligence. …
Well, at least they got the biblical proportions right: the massive Egyptian monument industry, the vast peoples and vaster landscapes, and most importantly, the God-sized plagues and waves. Otherwise, Ridley Scott's take on the great contest between Moses and Pharoah is underwhelming and ill-conceived. First, the underwhelming: nearly everyone — …
For a little while at the outset, you may find reason to smile: Wesley Snipes is very nearly charming as a newly sprung compatriot for senior super-soldier Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone, in frequent and extended closeup). When fellow Expendable Dolph Lundgren asks what he was in for, Snipes deadpans, "Tax …
The title refers to Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist famous for an experiment on obedience to authority in which participants administered electric shocks to subjects who answered questions incorrectly. (Or at least, they thought they did.) But while the film does give us plenty of Milgram's life, it's the experiment …