Search for 2015

Liam Neeson action thrillers come in two categories: the straightforward variety that transform him into a superhuman force of nature and those that are grittier and a little more respectful of an adult audience's intelligence. Considering the wa...

San Andreas is exactly what one might expect it to be - no more and no less. It's as if director Brad Peyton (Journey 2: The Mysterious Island) and screenwriter Carlton Cuse assembled this movie after attending a Disaster 101 course. Although tec...

For nearly as long as there have been horror movies, filmmakers have had fun trolling the genre. The first “official” such entry was Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein but that offbeat film, which featured many of the sanctioned Universal M...

Self/less begins with a promising (albeit well-worn) science fiction premise, degrades it by turning it into a generic thriller, and finishes it off with a rushed, disjointed ending. The film, from director Tarsem Singh (whose most recent credit was ...

Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve embraces a bleak worldview, or at least that's what his filmography would lead audiences to believe. His celebrated movies, which include Incendies, Prisoners, and now Sicario (and will soon add the long-gestat...

Sinister 2 falls in line with a majority of the horror films being produced today (especially those with numbers next to the titles): uninspired regurgitations that exist solely to make a few quick bucks from a ravenous (and often undiscriminating) a...

There are numerous powerful Holocaust movies available but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything that offers the kind of grim, you-are-there perspective of Son of Saul. With perhaps 90% of the shots in close-up with long takes, the movie ...

Boxing movies are like romantic comedies: they come in neat packages, follow tried-and-true formulas, and rarely challenge conventions.  There are outliers, of course, like Martin Scorsese's brilliant Raging Bull, but those are rare. For the...

Spare Parts tries too hard to be a based-on-a-true-story, feel-good, crowd-pleasing, triumph-of-the-underdogs movie. Somewhere along the line, perhaps by never deviating a millimeter from the expected trajectory of the genre, it crosses the line fr...

Warning: Oblique spoilers. An “average” James Bond movie can be described using three words: “satisfying but flawed.” To the extent that’s true, Spectre fills the mold. Overplotted and at least 20 minutes too long, t...