Movies in the Adventure genre

For longtime fans of the X-Men comic books, “The Dark Phoenix Saga” has been the Holy Grail. As crafted by Chris Claremont and John Byrne (with an assist from Dave Cockrum), the epic narrative, which was a major element of The Uncanny X-Me...

Call it The Golden Compass rule: No multi-part movie series should be started without a reasonable certainty that the story will be told in full. And, although The Golden Compass’ planned sequels were the first recent films to fall afoul of t...

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is not only a solid dystopian-flavored science fiction film in its own right but it elevates the stock of its immediate predecessor in the Planet of the Apes franchise, Rise of the Planet of the Apes. By adding to th...

Roland Emmerich must dislike New York City. After all, this is the third time he has destroyed it. The Day After Tomorrow, an ode to an apocalyptic endgame of global warming, is an old-fashioned disaster film with modern-day special effects. It'...

Another summer, another double-dip of disaster dramas. This time around, instead of volcanoes, it's comets. The films in question, Mimi Leder's Deep Impact and Michael Bay's Armageddon, are separated by two months, so the first should have a ...

Here's something to chew on: what's the favorite food of big, cheesy-looking special effects monsters like the one lurking in the bowels of a luxury liner in Deep Rising? The obvious answer to this question is cardboard, because that's the depth ...

Despite the “based on a true story” label, Deepwater Horizon is structured not so much as a fictionalized chronicle of actual events as it is an old-fashioned disaster movie. Although the genre has recently been overrun by apocalyptic sce...

For some reason, the Nazis are popular during the holiday season of 2008. They occupy central positions in Valkyrie and Good, flitter around the periphery of The Reader, and are rarely seen but very much present in Defiance. Edward Zwick's adapta...

More than 30 years after its initial release, The Dirty Dozen remains one of the most popular war films ever to grace the silver screen - a reputation that not even three bad made-for-TV sequels in the late '80s could tarnish. A quintessential "gu...

Divergent is the “next big thing,” or at least so hopes Summit Entertainment. The latest in a growing stream of high-profile YA (Young Adult) sci-fi/fantasy series to make it to the big screen, Divergent is poised to take its place alongside Th...