Movies starring Dan

To think of uber-producer Jerry Bruckheimer and action director Michael Bay is to be reminded of popcorn-and-eye candy trifles like The Rock and Armageddon - movies where flashy special effects and lobotomized scripts are arguably assets. The pair...

What would happen if a late-night, D-grade direct-to-cable thriller excised all of the raunchily enjoyable elements and managed to attract an A-list cast? The result might be shockingly like Perfect Stranger, a movie so inane that it fails to rise...

Phantom Thread, Paul Thomas Anderson’s follow-up to 2014’s Inherent Vice, feels a little like a mash-up of Bergman and Hitchcock without the verve of the latter and the subtleties of the former. What begins as a stately costume drama set i...

For Malcolm Washington, The Piano Lesson was something of a family affair. For his directorial debut, the filmmaker recruited his brother, John David Washington, to play the lead, while his father, Denzel, produced. The screenplay, which Malcolm c...

It has been said that the only way to truly enjoy a stoner comedy is to smoke a joint before watching it. Considering the quality of some of the movies wedded to this genre, I'm tempted to believe that. Thankfully, Pineapple Express is an excepti...

By turns powerful and frustrating, The Place Beyond the Pines is a three act tale about the sins of the fathers being visited upon the sons. It uses coincidence to emphasize consequence and ably applies karmic lifestyle interpretation to the text. ...

Remember how Liam Neeson made it an annual tradition to release a cheesy action/thriller every January or February? Well, Neeson appears to have retired from that business leaving the door wide open for Gerard Butler to step through. Butler has th...

Welcome to a world where Father knows best, where Mother cooks dinner, and where Sister and Brother's small missteps are treated with stern-but-kind lectures. It's a realm where everyone is nice to one another, where neighbors greet each other...

Predators is Robert Rodriguez's attempt to re-invigorate (but not reboot) the Predator franchise, whose devaluation began with an ill-advised sequel, accelerated as a result of the poorly realized Alien vs. Predator, and bottomed out with the lifel...

As something of a World War II buff, I know a thing or two about D-Day. Yet the story told in Pressure, based on real events as presented in David Haig's stage play of the same name, was partially new to me. While I knew the weather played a s...