Category Archives: Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news

The pedigree for “Fathers and Daughters” suggests there were great expectations for this melodrama at one time. Oscar winners Russell Crowe, Jane Fonda and Octavia Spencer, Oscar nominee Quvenzhane Wallis and reunited “Big Love” lovers Amanda Seyfried and Aaron Paul … Continue reading →

Gennadiy Mokhnenko is a two-fisted Pentacostalist pastor who sees himself as a character he remembers from a children’s cartoon. He is “Gennadiy the Crocodile,” friend to children everywhere, and a friend with teeth. Steve Hoover’s documentary “Almost Holy” follows this … Continue reading →

But but but… I thought “The Curse of Sleeping Beauty” was a children’s film! Not animated? In 3D? No true love’s kiss, and all that? Well, sort of. It’s a haunted house story, though it doesn’t start that way. Thomas … Continue reading →

Everybody pretty much abandoned this weekend to “Captain America: Actually an Avengers Movie.” It could manage another $80 million at the box office (any less than that is a sign of audience fatigue). So there’s not a lot of new … Continue reading →

  Another video game turned into a movie? I thought they’d all but given up that pitch? But no, Hollywood “branding uber alles” and such. Ubisoft is a big reason I never got addicted to video games. Glitchy titles in … Continue reading →

Director Jodie Foster’s “Money Monster” aims high, an attempt to be a riotous, righteous Jeremiad about our “rigged” financial system and the TV hustlers who try to pass off hype as “business news.” It never quite gets there, never quite … Continue reading →

Harry Hawkes is loud, boorish and overbearing, a real life of the party because he insists on being just that. To state the obvious. Never was a man so intent on making a splash, or in his case, “A Bigger … Continue reading →

Addiction and overcoming it is the most traumatic thing most people who endure it will ever experience. Harrowing, dangerous, destroying your health and relationships and taking lives all around you, its very intensity must convince you that nobody has ever … Continue reading →

The best of this year’s admittedly weak selection of Mother’s Day movies, the one getting a wider release AFTER the Hallmark holiday, is “The Meddler,” a broad and uneven comedy that coasts by on the charms of Susan Sarandon and … Continue reading →

It has eye-popping special effects and a true larger-than-life villain. “X-Men: Apocalypse,” is actually about something, with the intramural/intra-mutant quarrel built on a reality that the shoe-horned in fight in the blockbuster “Captain America: Civil War”lacks. The violence has consequences. … Continue reading →