Yearly Archives: 2016

“Suicide Squad” hits theaters as the most hotly-anticipated popcorn pic in what has been a fairly disappointing cinema summer. Hyped as this year’s “Guardians of the Galaxy,” and positioned in that coveted early-August “Guardians” release window, a darkly-comic comic book … Continue reading →

You have to strain in the first few scenes to figure out that the omnipresent, labored, slurred — let’s just say it — aged narration of Woody Allen’s “Cafe Society” is being delivered by Woody himself. That’s fitting, as this … Continue reading →

With all the books and documentaries about the state of American comedy and how those who succeed at it must first make their mark at “Saturday Night Live,” there isn’t much we don’t know about that path to showbiz success. … Continue reading →

Comic books and the ultimate movie nerd. A marriage made in hell.

“Logic,” the great thriller director Alfred Hitchcock once intoned, “is dull.” So don’t try to pin down the geography of the long chase that is “North by Northwest,” don’t question too deeply how “The Birds” were able to pin down … Continue reading →

Actually, when you add up the notices, all three wide releases this weekend sit right on the cusp of widely endorsed. The dislike is lukewarm, the endorsements likewise. That goes for “Jason Bourne,” an all-chase, no character-development return to the … Continue reading →

“Nerve” is a thriller that almost lives up to its name. A jumpy and tech-savvy plunge into the Digital Death of Privacy that today’s youngest webheads/cell-addicts are embracing, it manages to be cautionary but cute, menacing but alluring at the … Continue reading →

If only “Bad Moms” possessed the guts to live down to its title, the wit to deliver on its premise. An over-reach for a “Hangover” styled spin on motherhood with drugs, sex, booze and “experimentation,” it reaches “raucous” on occasion. … Continue reading →

They weren’t much to start with, but the “Ice Age” movies are officially two or three installments past their expiration date with “Ice Age: Collision Course.” A laugh-starved kids’ cartoon, it has nothing to recommend it to adults save for … Continue reading →

There’s something inherently hilarious about the very idea of Dinesh D’Souza, a smug brown foreign person pandering to elderly, xenophobic white persons as he demonizes the political party that represents most other brown persons in his adopted country. Not as … Continue reading →