Movies starring Max

Blue Beetle is emblematic of what the superhero movie has become in 2023: an overlong slog through well-worn tropes. Gone are the zest and liveliness that characterized earlier films or the experimental genre-bending of the MCU’s salad days. Put...

Ticket to Paradise is a frothy concoction that will appeal to those whose movie-loving sensibilities are anchored to the rom-coms of the 1980s and 1990s. Had this movie been made 25 years ago, it likely would have been hailed for its whimsy, f...

Whether as a result of coincidence or intent, the COVID pandemic has issued in a new era of motion picture musicals. Not since mid-20th century, when Musicals were perennially the biggest earners, has the genre been this popular. Everybody’s...

It’s very difficult to kill a slasher film franchise. The existence of Spiral is proof that, no matter how many times you put down a series like this, it keeps coming back for more. The original Saw reached theaters in 2004 and, as I wrote i...

Mortal Kombat was made with fans in mind and, as such, it has little time or patience with those who come to it without the prerequisite background. 40% fight scenes and 60% fan service, Simon McQuiod’s slash-and-gore fest will leave the uni...

JT LeRoy, Justin Kelly’s adaptation of Savannah Knoop’s memoir, strives to be more than a run-of-the-mill biopic about two women who perpetrate a con on the literary world. It wants to address issues of gender fluidity and hypocrisy. It wa...

Most of us living in the United States have never heard of “Peterloo” so Mike Leigh’s recreation of the events leading up to the infamous August 16, 1819 massacre represents a history lesson as well as an effectively crafted (albeit too ...

Although there are too few movies out there with women of color at the top of the marquee, the way to successfully address this situation isn’t by taking an established concept, applying a gender-reversal, and creating an inferior production...

Time Trap is a superficially entertaining science-fiction action/adventure film that might have worked better had it focused more on the “science fiction” elements and less on the halfhearted “action/adventure” ones. Movies about time ...

Watching The Wife, I was reminded of how movies used to be. Back in the 1990s, something like this would have been common: an engaging story anchored by two powerful performances. Glenn Close is as good as she has ever been (although I would p...