Search for 2018

If I knew definitively what the plural was for the term deus ex machina, I’d apply it here. Rarely can I remember a movie filled with so many miraculous rescues and associated contrivances. The Death Cure represents the final chapter in a mo...

The endless summer, when one day bleeds into the next to stock a catalog of memories… For many families, the summer vacation, whether at a lake or a beach, is an annual ritual – occasionally hated at the time yet looked on with fondness th...

In a way, I feel like the victim of a bait-and-switch scheme.  The movie I saw isn’t the one advertised in the trailers. As marketed, The Meg looks like a breezy, campy monster movie that supersizes Jaws with an infusion of Jurassic Park. I...

For some reason, there has been a move by a few critics to politicize their reviews of Mile 22, Peter Berg’s tightly-constructed espionage thriller. I guess one side-effect of living in a hyper-partisan era is that some films aren’t allowe...

Reliability. Of all the qualities one could ascribe to the Mission: Impossible movies, that one is the most cogent. This has especially been true since writer/director Christopher McQuarrie (who seems to be Tom Cruise’s personal screenwriter)...

When it comes to fantasy and soft science fiction, the concept of “world building” is at least as important as narrative and character development. “World building” refers to the ability of an author or filmmaker to craft a new and ama...

Watching Never Goin’ Back, I wasn’t sure whether this was intended to be a slice-of-life comedy, a coming of age drama, or a horror film. Since the first two don’t really apply – it’s not nearly as funny as it thinks it is and the ch...

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is a miscalculation of Magic Kingdom-sized proportions. Designed for and targeted at prepubescent girls, the holiday-themed fantasy adventure drowns in CGI, underdeveloped characters, and a plot utterly devoi...

Occupation accomplishes the previously unthinkable: an alien invasion film that makes Independence Day look smart. A so-bad-it-has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed motion picture (not that I recommend subjecting oneself to the experience), Occupation...

There are three rules for any self-respecting heist movie: (1) the caper should be interesting, convoluted, but easily explained/decoded at the end; (2) although no heist is airtight, the holes shouldn’t be apparent to the audience in real t...