Monthly Archives: August 2018

For me, the money shot of “Skate Kitchen” is a little girl, clinging to her mom’s hand and spinning around in awe and adoration as a gang of load, assertive and a little unruly skateboarders swerve around them on a … Continue reading →

Truthfully, teaming up with Emily Blunt’s not a bad call. And you can’t tell anything from a stars wandering a tiny sliver of the set in a “teaser” trailer. But as we’ve reached the DDJSP — The Dwayne Johnson Saturation … Continue reading →

Just a little spring break camping trip, that’s what teen bros Sean, Donnie and Jeremy have in mind. Sean (Daniel Doheny) has been away at school in Germany. Donnie (Luke Spencer Roberts) “might” have been telling the whole town he … Continue reading →

When the actor Thomas Hulce was preparing to play the film role that defined him, “Amadeus,” he read about Mozart, but he truly studied the tennis star of the day, John McEnroe. Who better to model a precocious brat of … Continue reading →

The hype — a “Sharknado/Shark Week” marketing campaign and funnier-than-the-movie trailer led to a big Thursday and very big Friday for “The Meg.”  Warner Brothers had tamped down expectations, and this China-centric, Chinese financed late summer groaner should have made … Continue reading →

An occupied British island, plucky locals “resisting” the Nazis with a fake “book club,” hiding livestock and a recipe for using the one vegetable they were allowed in creative, whimsical ways  — “The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Society” has … Continue reading →

Hogwarts it ain’t. Kind of a giddy trailer, eh wot?

The triumph of “Crazy Rich Asians” is the spectrum of its characters, a broad representation of the global Chinese diaspora. Granted, these are the Asian “one percent” we’re talking about here, but you have old money nobility, sage elders, gauche … Continue reading →

The giant prehistoric shark thriller “The Meg” opens to indifferent reviews, and middling box office expectations. A $23 million opening for a reported $150 million film won’t please the accountants, but the Chinese investment, co-stars and setting suggest that’s where … Continue reading →

A pre-fabricated urban legend comes to the big screen in “Slender Man,” essentially a random mash-up of horror film tropes and effects that doesn’t amount to much that’s frightening. Director Sylvain White, of “Stomp the Yard” and a lot of … Continue reading →