Monthly Archives: July 2015

The striking desert around Joshua Tree National Monument and the lovely lighthouses of California provide postcard pretty settings for “Safelight,” a tepid romantic melodrama about two young people looking for one shot at being normal. Evan Peters is Charles, labeled … Continue reading →

“Man has always quested for some version of immortality, through theology or science.” No, Ryan Reynolds isn’t reading from a prepared statement. Nobody’s given him talking points for his new body-switch thriller, “Self/less,” a film about a dying tycoon (Ben … Continue reading →

The reviews weren’t rapturous, in that We Approve of Pixar way. But Universal’s “Despicable Me” prequel, “Minions,” did $45 million in business Friday, with a notion of hitting that same number Saturday and a big chunk of that 0n Sunday … Continue reading →

Theaters are such naturally spooky places — with their high, creaking catwalks, echoing stages and trap doors — that it’s no wonder that ghostly superstitions have found a home there. So it takes some effort to make a laughably bad … Continue reading →

“Minions” is ninety minutes of random wackiness, a pleasantly harmless and inconsequential origin story for those tiny, yellow goggle-eyed sidekicks to “Despicable Me,” aka evil genius Gru. Built on an across-the-epochs search for the ultimate villainous “Boss,” from T-Rex through … Continue reading →

When you’ve run through so many alternate timelines and time-travel-to-prevent-the-future scenarios that you wind up betraying the fine, lean lines of the original “Terminator…” When you’ve run through Michael Biehn, Christian Bale and Sam Worthington, and the only actors left … Continue reading →

When the big breakthrough comes, will most of the world even hear about it? If it’s an expensive, life-extension-by-transplanting-memories procedure , will the mega-rich even let the word get out? That’s the premise behind “Self/less,” a generic but still thought-provoking … Continue reading →

In romance, lovers live in isolation, that “nation of two” that Kurt Vonnegut described in “Mother Night.” It’s a form of myopia, the young couple in “10,000 KM (Kilometers)” figure out. One can’t quite focus on both of the other’s … Continue reading →

The sandy barrens of Australia’s Outback provide one last test of a married couple on the brink in “Strangerland.” An all-star Australian melodrama with a superb cast and a striking setting, it’s an intimate story of running away from the … Continue reading →