Monthly Archives: February 2017

The Old West has never seemed bloodier, grimmer, more Godless or lawless than the version rendered by Dutch filmmaker Martin Koolhoven. The director of the pictorially striking and tense World War II in the Occupied Countries drama “Winter in Wartime” … Continue reading →

The first animated film to finally suck the life out of “Sing!” has arrived, and “The LEGO Batman Movie” is packing them in to the tune of $55 million on its opening weekend, per Deadline.com.  Parents may already own earlier … Continue reading →

The Great Poet played his part, almost too well. An egoist and charmer, he could be relied on to recite verse, on demand, at parties, at brothels, to strangers on the street. Callous, yet soulful, devoted yet a womanizer, he … Continue reading →

It’s still as pretty as a toybox, eye candy in the brightest plastic colors and textures. The creators of the second big screen LEGO toys movie stick to the rest of the formula, as well. There’s one original pop song. … Continue reading →

Those “Fifty Shades” dullards are still flirting, fornicating, breaking up and tying up in “Fifty Shades Darker,” a film which promises “darker” but delivers “funnier” — with some of the laughs intentional. It’s a soapy sequel, a drinks-in-the-face/masked ball/helicopter crash/melodramatic … Continue reading →

Paramount has revived “The Ring” cycle with “Rings,” a middling update that has few of the chills and little of the suspense of the J-horror original, or its Hollywood version. The ever-cloudy Pacific Northwest is still home to “the videotape … Continue reading →

The fists fly, the bullets blaze and the mayhem borders on magnificent in “John Wick: Chapter 2,” a sequel that ups the artistic ante even as it boosts the body count of that sleeper hit about the assassin’s assassin played … Continue reading →

With a little luck, the hashtag “oscarsowhite” will be but a distant memory when the 89th Annual Academy Awards are handed out Feb. 26. You could see it in the nominations, which handed out a lot of love to “Moonlight,” … Continue reading →

There was probably never a time when Gore Verbinski could have made a small scale horror picture about a man trapped in a sanitarium. Think of the glorious excesses of “Mouse Hunt.” And that came before the blank check that the … Continue reading →

It’s early November, 1939. Hitler and the Soviet Union have invaded Poland, Britain and France have honored treaties and World War II has officially begun in Europe. And a mop-topped workman, his teeth clenching a flashlight, his hands and knees … Continue reading →