Movies starring Jr

The familiar fairy tales we were weaned on aren't good enough any more. First, Shrek playfully toyed with some of our old friends by having them interact in atypical ways with a big, green ogre. Then along came last year's Hoodwinked, which refus...

Harriet Tubman’s story as presented in Kasi Lemmons’ new feature, Harriet, is inspirational and crowd-pleasing. One of the most heroic figures on the mid-19th century abolitionist movement and the best remembered conductor on the Undergrou...

With movies like The High Note that tell familiar stories, it’s all about how things are presented. Details matter. Performances are key and the “little things” that give the narrative a unique flavor are to be savored. In imparting the ...

John Sayles is one of the last true independent American filmmakers. Honeydripper is his 16th feature and he has made all of them on his own terms without studio interference. (He sells them to distributors once they are in the can.) To date, his...

Robert Downey, Sr. is an original American independent film maker. He has been at his craft for more than 30 years now -- his debut, Chafed Elbows, came out in 1965. His best known work, the trilogy of Putney Swope, Pound, and Greaser's Palace, w...

I recognize the financial importance of nostalgia in today's movie business, especially when it comes to horror "franchises". There will always be return engagements for Michael Meyers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Kruger. But The Gorton's Fishe...

Three Russians and three Americans living in harmony aboard the International Space Station (I.S.S.) – that’s the setup for Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s science fiction thriller, I.S.S. The film’s early scenes depict the day-to-day interaction...

When it became mainstream in the late 1990s, the Internet fundamentally changed the way human beings communicated. E-mail replaced phone calls and letters as the primary means of long-distance communication. The social media revolution, which ...

Over the past few years, as studios like Disney, Dreamworks, and Fox have worked to revive motion picture animation, Warner Brothers has remained mired in the lackluster morass that nearly killed animation during the '80s. The distributor's big ef...

Iron Man is a different breed of superhero movie - a film that remembers it's possible to be outside the target demographic and still enjoy a tale set in this genre. What makes Iron Man interesting isn't the storyline which, except for a few wrink...