Movies starring Penn

Has the COVID-19 pandemic brought out the best in horror filmmakers? 2022 has not been a good year for cinema, but it has been a very good year for horror. Smile represents the latest in an impressive roster of horror films that have pushed the en...

I wish there were more movies like this. Licorice Pizza, Paul Thomas Anderson’s most uplifting movie to-date, may give some viewers a flashback to the days when Cameron Crowe was at the height of his powers. It’s that kind of movie: sweet and ...

The Layover is an appalling movie – a reworked version of the essential plot elements of 2011’s Something Borrowed with everything worthwhile (and there wasn’t much to begin with) removed. The result is an unpleasant, unwatchable example...

Calling The Angry Birds Movie an “animated film” is giving it airs. It’s a cartoon. Deal with it. Family-friendly motion pictures, whether live action or computer-drawn (the hand-drawn versions are no longer being made), fall into one of sev...

If I was in the mood for an over-the-hill action hero, I think I'd go with Schwarzenegger. Or maybe Stallone. Or even Liam Neeson. I definitely wouldn't pick Sean Penn. Granted, the two-time Oscar winner has an impressive resume, but he's...

One could make a compelling argument that The Secret Life of Walter Mitty does what a good remake should do: it takes the essential premise of the original and, while retaining some of the names and touchstones of its predecessor, moves in a new di...

There seems to be little doubt that Ruben Fleischer, the director behind the well-received Zombieland and the less well-received 30 Minutes or Less, is a Brian De Palma fan. How else to explain the kinship that exists between Fleischer's latest, Ga...

Making an entertaining Christmas movie - at least one that can be enjoyed by anyone having gone through puberty - has become a lost art. I'm not referring to a title destined to take its place among the timeless classics, but merely something that ...

Long ago, the concept of "money" was devised as a means by which commerce could be simplified - after all, it's easier to carry around some kind of marker than cows or cattle or bags of grain. As society has evolved, however, so has the way in whic...

At its least, Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life is an ambitious slice of cinema by a major filmmaker. Striving for no less than the pinnacle of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Tree of Life falls short of masterful but retains a power ...