Movies starring Mark Wahlberg

The Gambler is a solid remake - a film that retraces the path of the original while carving out its own identity. The 2014 iteration isn't as good as its 1974 predecessor but it offers its share of small pleasures, not the least of which is the c...

M. Night Shyamalan has always been something of an illusionist. Even at his best, he succeeds not because he's a masterful storyteller but because he's an expert at sleight-of-hand and pulling rabbits out of his hat. With The Lady in the Water, S...

After seeing two previews for David O. Russell's I Heart Huckabees, I had no idea what it was about. Now, having seen the movie, I still feel like I'm on the outside looking in. I certainly realize why the preview is so obtuse. There's no way that tw...

One corner of the genre of sports clichés is devoted to true stories of overachieving underdogs. In recent years, Disney has repeatedly raided this area, creating one inspiring story after another, most of which (like Remember the Titans and The R...

The 2003 version of The Italian Job is less of a straightforward remake of the 1969 picture than it is a complete re-interpretation. Enough has changed that it's possible to see the two films not as the same story separated by three decades, but a...

In the mountains of Afghanistan, one man, injured and bleeding, struggles against impossible odds to stay alive. It's at this point that the focus of Peter Berg's Lone Survivor shifts from that of a war movie to that of a tale of survival. In retro...

Maybe there's some truth to the assertion that Alice Sebold's novel is unfilmable. After all, if a visionary like Peter Jackson, who crafted a nearly perfect cinematic adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, can't do it, who can? Perhaps the issue i...

"I don't believe in heaven. I believe in pain. I believe in fear. I believe in death." So states Max Payne (Mark Wahlberg), elucidating his nihilistic creed during the film's opening moments. While the movie bearing the title character's name h...

For some reason, there has been a move by a few critics to politicize their reviews of Mile 22, Peter Berg’s tightly-constructed espionage thriller. I guess one side-effect of living in a hyper-partisan era is that some films aren’t allowe...

Will Ferrell's recent resume isn't anything to get excited about: Land of the Lost, Step Brothers, Semi-Pro, Blades of Glory. There's a sameness to all of them, not only in that the Ferrell characters are difficult to differentiate from one anothe...