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Rarely is New York merely a setting in a movie. Whether big, bright, and garish or dark and dingy, the city more often serves as a background character. And, although the New York of a Woody Allen film couldn’t be more different than the one...

Imaginary is Blumhouse through-and-through. Once in a while, Jason Blum’s template results in an honest-to-god inventive horror experience but, more often than not, his cheaply-made, throw-way films belong buried six feet under with the various ...

The temptation is there to say that Independence Day: Resurgence tarnishes the image of its predecessor but the original Independence Day wasn’t all that good to begin with. It’s probably better in our memories than it ever was on cellulo...

Raiders of the Lost Ark was a nearly perfect action movie – upon its release in the early 1980s, it redefined the genre for decades to come. It also provided a trap for co-creators Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, forcing them to repeatedly tr...

It’s apparent that writer/director Brandon Cronenberg has a fascination with what constitutes identity. That question, posed existentially without the involvement of religion or spirituality, lies at the core of both Cronenberg’s dark, trippy ...

If there's a complaint to be made about Insidious, it's that the film's second half is unable to live up to the impossibly high standards set by the first half. This isn't unusual when it comes to films that include a "reveal"; even Jaws lost a sha...

Insidious: Chapter 2 illustrates that, regardless of his past success in the horror movie field, James Wan is not infallible when it comes to the genre. The second installment of what is likely to become a franchise is disappointing precisely becau...

The Interpreter is a cut above the average politically-based thriller. Although the events depicted in the film are fictional (as is the country in which some of the action transpires), they bear a more-than-passing resemblance to incidents that h...

Into the Woods left me out in the cold. The long-gestating cinematic adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's fairy tale-infused Broadway musical, Into the Woods can claim a clever screenplay and a few enjoyable performances but little else. The generic ...

Is This Thing On? is a good old-fashioned character study: a slice-of-life drama about a man who rediscovers himself after having fallen into a lifeless rut. It's the kind of thing that most people can relate to on some level, and director Bradley...