Search for John Powell

Despite its popularity with children, Ice Age represented, at the time, a nadir for digital animation. Although entertaining, the film couldn't stand toe-to-toe with its Pixar and Dreamworks competitors. Ice Age: The Meltdown represents a further...

Fourteen years after the release of The Bourne Identity, the Bourne movies have deviated so drastically from Robert Ludlum’s source novels that, like James Bond, the film character exists separately from his written inspiration. Over the course...

With its skinny running length (80 minutes, including credits), often incoherent narrative, and neutered violence, Jonah Hex shows all the signs of having been re-worked in the editing room. The resultant production, as is often the case in situat...

One of the cardinal rules when making a motion picture about a superhero, especially one no one has heard of, is not to make the integrity of the story depend on the existence of a sequel. Unfortunately, that's a rule that director Doug Liman brea...

The action/comedy genre has grown in popularity over the past couple of decades, but it remains difficult for filmmakers to find a workable balance between the seemingly disparate elements of the recipe. Too much action often results in marginaliz...

The average animated sequel is content to apprehend the successful elements from its predecessor and regurgitate them. The result, no matter how enjoyable, often drips with an overly familiar precipitation. Dreamworks' biggest animated franchise, S...

Kung Fu Panda adopts a different, less zany tone than one might expect from a movie with that title, especially considering that Jack Black has been brought on board to provide the lead voice. While it would be unfair to say that the movie doesn't...

"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees for the trees have no tongues." Considering the brevity of the average Dr. Seuss book, it's no surprise that many of his best-known stories have been satisfactorily adapted into half-...

The thing I appreciate most about Minions & Monsters is its surprising sophistication. Sure, by the end, the film is doing the kinds of things that will engage kids (Minion-piloted spaceships shooting lasers at giant gelatinous blobs), but it ...

The problem with Mr. and Mrs. Smith is that it's really two movies in one. The first is a sly comedy/thriller worthy of Hitchcock, and the other is a big, noisy summer action flick. The marriage of these two, like that of the title characters, is...