Search for 2017

“Raped While Dying”, “And Still No Arrests”, “How Come, Chief Willoughby?” The text of those three billboards establishes a narrative but, although that’s the starting point for Martin McDonagh’s stellar Three Billboards Outside...

Time Trap is a superficially entertaining science-fiction action/adventure film that might have worked better had it focused more on the “science fiction” elements and less on the halfhearted “action/adventure” ones. Movies about time ...

Is it pointless to write a review of Transformers: The Last Knight, the fifth installment of Michael Bay’s celebration of all that’s wrong with Blockbuster Cinema? Bay’s response to his critics is to flash his winning smile and point to t...

The warning signs were there that Tulip Fever was not going to be a good film. The movie had a troubled production history with hiccups and false starts resulting in an “unreleaseable” cut that has sat around gathering dust since principal ...

Is it unfair to compare Luc Besson to Michael Bay? Some would argue that it is but I’m not sure Besson would be among them. Both directors make the movies they want to make and, although there’s more artistry evident in Besson’s work, th...

Suicide. Despite its growing prevalence in modern society, few filmmakers tackle this issue, at least not in a serious fashion. The Valley, set in California’s tech-heavy Silicon Valley, examines the impact of a young woman’s suicide on tho...

Victoria and Abdul, based on (mostly) true events as related in Shrabani Basu’s historical chronicle of the same name, is effectively a sequel to the 1997 film, Mrs. Brown. That movie, directed by John Madden, detailed Queen Victoria’s fri...

Always save the best for last…that’s not a phrase many movie series adhere to. It happens occasionally but franchises that build to a satisfying climax are few and far between. That, among other things, makes the new Planet of the Apes rebo...

Few things are more depressing in moviedom than films that squander a great premise. Such is the case with What Happened to Monday, a sci-fi thriller than all-but-abandons its deep philosophical underpinning in order to pursue a straightforward...

Watching The Wife, I was reminded of how movies used to be. Back in the 1990s, something like this would have been common: an engaging story anchored by two powerful performances. Glenn Close is as good as she has ever been (although I would p...