Movies starring Jr

When J.J. Abrams released Cloverfield in 2008, it arrived cloaked in secrecy. Now, some eight years later, the film’s so-called “blood relative” (Abrams’ term, not mine), comes with a similar marketing strategy. Going-in, viewers are unlikely...

There's something irresistible about a displaced consciousness story, whether it's an adult occupying the body of a child, a child occupying the body of an adult, or a gender switch. 13 Going on 30 belongs to the same sub-genre as Big, although ma...

211 (the name refers to the police code for a robbery) is a frustrating crime thriller that incorporates too many plot threads into the overall narrative at the expense of character identification, suspense, and emotional heft. Despite a high ...

Spoilers follow! James Cameron is widely viewed as being one of the most difficult and demanding directors, due in large part to the powerful streak of perfectionism that defines his filmmaking. Cameron's most difficult and contentious shoot to...

American Gangster is compelling in the same way that many mob-related motion pictures are compelling, but it fails to achieve the greatness that the best of them attain. The problem with American Gangster may be that it tries to hard to provide bal...

As Good as It Gets is a perfect Christmas release, not because the story takes place during the Yule season, but because many of the plot elements are straight out of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. There's more than just a little Scrooge in M...

The Avengers kicks ass. It's a loud, brash spectacle that blows up as many things as a Transformers outing but without the same grinding sense of soulless robotic monotony. For years, Marvel has been building to this movie, painstakingly introducin...

It is the 800-pound gorilla in the room, the behemoth before which every other would-be blockbuster during the summer of 2015 must bow. Yet, perhaps because the filmmakers subconsciously recognized this and didn't feel the pressure to excel, the ...

Minimal spoilers. There are some references to things that happen and the usual discussion about plot elements available via trailers and pre-release clips, but I have tried to remain as “spoiler-lite” as possible. As always, however, if y...

Minimal spoilers. There are some vague references to things that happen and the usual discussion about plot elements available via trailers and pre-release clips, but I have tried to remain as “spoiler-lite” as possible. As always, however...