Search for 2017

The similarities between Daddy’s Home 2 and last week’s release, A Bad Moms Christmas, are striking. Not only are the two films sequels to successful first installments but they follow the similar template of bringing back the most popular...

The Dark Tower has been called Stephen King’s magnum opus for a good reason. Spanning eight novels and needing well over one million words, the saga took more than 30 years to craft (the first volume was published in 1982 and the most recent...

It has been a good year for movies related to the 1940 evacuation from Dunkirk. Combined with Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk (about the actual events) and Lone Scherfig’s Their Finest (about a clumsy propaganda film made about the situation), ...

Roger Ebert once said that, if done right, any topic could be the subject of a comedy. In that spirit, consider The Death of Stalin. From the title, one might assume that this is a serious look at a seminal event of 20th Century world history. ...

Despicable Me 3 is an example of how even the most promising animated franchises can hit a wall if allowed to continue too long. One can understand why Universal greenlit this film. The previous two (or three if you count the spin-off Minions)...

In July 1967, civil unrest resulting from the brutality of the predominantly white Detroit police department reached a boiling point. The result, which history has named the “12th Street Riot”, was one of the deadliest and destructive riots in...

When it comes to the pantheon of the Worst Movies Ever Made, there are only a few challengers to the title claimed by Plan Nine from Outer Space. One of those is Tommy Wiseau’s universally derided 2003 debut feature, The Room. Instead of fad...

Showing great restraint and refusing to demonize the closed community in which the story transpires, director Sebastian Lelio has tackled the age-old tale of forbidden love and its implications for those who fight for freedom and choice while ...

This review contains spoilers. I try to be discreet about them but they are there.No one can dance through genres as blithely as Francois Ozon. From the comedic drama of Water Drops on Burning Rocks to the mystery of Under the Sand to the ecce...

For a movie about small people, Downsizing certainly thinks big…too big, perhaps. Director/co-writer Alexander Payne has done such a good job of world-building that there are far too many ideas, subplots, and opportunities for one two-hour f...