Movies starring James Franco

Spoilers abound! Beware if you care.It’s rare to find a film as discombobulated as Kin, a would-be franchise-starter that begins as a dysfunctional family drama, changes into a road movie, and concludes as a science fiction-tinged siege film...

30 years have passed since the assassination of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and, the ballot passage of California's recent Proposition 8 notwithstanding, advances have been made in the area of gay rights, although there are still many hurd...

I can kind-of, sort-of see how this story might work as a novel. Bad dialogue doesn't sound as howlingly awful when not spoken aloud. Idiotic plot contrivances don't seem as painful and obvious. A love affair depends only on the spell woven by t...

Oz the Great and Powerful is director Sam Raimi's prequel to The Wizard of Oz. This new vision of The Land of Oz is an imaginative mix of live-action and CGI that pays homage to the iconic images and timeless sense of wonder in the classic The Wiza...

Most films about teenagers fall into one of two categories: nihilistic tales about angst-riddled kids and saccharine-infused Hollywood confections. To its credit, Palo Alto occupies a welcome middle ground. With a loose, at times almost dreamlike s...

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...

Rise of the Planet of the Apes represents Fox's attempt to reinvigorate a dormant franchise. The new movie is technically a prequel to the 1968 Planet of the Apes; however, it ignores the various sequels and spin-offs (including a TV series) that d...

Recent times have been good to Marvel comics, and the long-anticipated arrival of Spider-Man represents the latest step up the ladder. Long the underdog in the motion picture arena, Marvel has at last been able to catch up to rival DC comics by pl...

Spider-Man 2 has all the elements of a good, but not great, superhero motion picture. While lacking the tragic grandeur that made last year's Hulk such a unique experience, Spider-Man 2 fills the void with solid character development, self-referen...

The Spider-Man series, which debuted in 2002 and continued in 2004 and 2007, represents the first superhero cycle to complete a trilogy with the same primary cast and production team it had at the beginning. If nothing else, that assures viewers o...