Monthly Archives: June 2024

It isn’t scary, with even the best-engineered “gotchas” landing flat. Kind of a big deal when you’re making a horror film. It’s joyless and humorless to boot, with slick production design that imagines a creature-inhabited “forest” on an island generally … Continue reading →

This is what I get for not catching “Garfield” weeks ago. Missing out on an August 2 release trailer for this adaptation of a Crockett Johnson kiddie book. Could be cute. Or not.

I didn’t really warm up to “Hit Man,” a glib comedy about a freelance police surveillance technician pressed into service as a fake murderer-for-hire to entrap people conspiring to have someone killed. Its efforts to find “cute” and “charming” in … Continue reading →

It’s usually only alluded to in TV news coverage of why China is so interested in “developing” Africa with roads and infrastructure and buying up swaths of America or Australia, what Saudi Arabia is up to purchasing land abroad or … Continue reading →

There are many good excuses for a film buff to not “get around to” the Powell & Pressburger production, “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.” It’s almost three hours long, is famous for its sentimentality and cinematic patience in … Continue reading →

So this summer’s dumb, gonzo shark movie is French, and is about endangered sharks “evolving” and taking their “swim-eat-procreate” act up the River Seine to Paris. “Under Paris” lives down to that “dumb” label, with diver after diver suiting up, … Continue reading →

There’s nothing novel or new about “Edge of Everything.” But for half a century, every generation has needed its cinematic essay on growing up in a heedless rush. Comedy or tragedy, cartoonish or cautionary, “Sixteen Candles” or “thirteen,” “Edge of … Continue reading →

Gassed, winded and showing its/their age, those “Bad Boys” are back — wise-cracking, trash-talking, gun-slinging and coping with their own mortality for “Bad Boys: Ride or Die.” The franchise is almost 30 years old and its action stars are well … Continue reading →

I think there were trailers to three hit man movies in a row before my screening of “Bad Boys.” This one stars Dave Bautista, serves up Sofia Boutella as the love interest who doesn’t have a clue what her man … Continue reading →

It’s hard for any film buff to believe that the famed British filmmaking team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger ever went out of fashion. The co-writers and producers, with Powell doing the directing and Pressburger taking the lead on … Continue reading →