Movies starring Jan

Summer is the season of bloat and the trait is evident in Spy's excessive running length. At about 90 minutes, this would have been a fresh, breezy action-comedy. However, with an additional half-hour of padding, viewers are forced to endure stre...

The biggest crime committed by The Spy Who Dumped Me isn’t its dearth of humor or reliance on an unimaginative espionage plot but the way it wastes the talents of its leads, Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon. Their easy rapport, a staple of any wo...

I remember the first time someone told me about the premise for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home -- that the crew of the former Enterprise would travel back in time to retrieve a pair of humpback whales. Described thus, it sounds abysmally bad, s...

Going into Stay, I was aware that the director was Marc Forster, the man who made Monster's Ball and Finding Neverland. However, even with that knowledge, it wouldn't have surprised me to see David Lynch's name during the closing credits. Stay is...

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, F.W. Murnau's first Hollywood feature, has been cited in some quarters as "the best silent film ever made." Although there may be a hint of hyperbole in that statement, there's no doubting that this film, made during ...

When The Sure Thing was released in 1985, it was out of step with the times. Teen comedies in those years were saturated with sex and broad humor. Romance and realism (even to a modest degree) were undesirable relics of a bygone era. Nevertheles...

Aspects of The Swan beguile and engage while others verge on the pretentious (like quoting Tarkovsky). As a slice-of-life/coming-of-age tale, The Swan hits many of the right notes but as an attempt to be something more, it paradoxically becom...

If there are any 24 fans who have wondered what the TV series might be like if Liam Neeson replaced Kiefer Sutherland, Taken provides an opportunity to have that question answered. Neeson's Bryan Mills uses nearly all the Jack Bauer tactics, inclu...

The original Taken, released in the United States in early 2009, was never intended to be anything more than a January throw-away. $145 million later, Fox had a different opinion of the French-made film, whose U.S. opening occurred months after it ...

Taken 3 is exactly what one might anticipate from an unnecessary sequel in a mediocre franchise. Even those desperate for a Liam Neeson action fix may be disappointed. The film, directed like its immediate predecessor by Luc Besson disciple Olivier M...