Search for Risti

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a popular thriller trope in which a character (or group of characters) would form a connection with a stranger (or strangers) but, over time, the actions and motivations of one character would turn murderous....

Does anyone remember the 2002 animated film Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron? I didn’t either until I looked it up. That nearly-two decades old hand-drawn movie provided the basis for the apparently popular Netflix series Spirit Riding Free ...

Most of those who elect to see Sully, Clint Eastwood’s re-enactment of the 2009 ditching of a commercial airliner in the Hudson River, will remember the incident involving U.S. Airways Flight 1549 from news reports. For several days following t...

There has been much discussion and debate recently about the simplistic and juvenile handling of characters in female-oriented motion pictures, with perhaps Confessions of a Shopaholic being the poster child for what's wrong with many of these movi...

By now, I'm tired of penguins. After Madagascar, March of the Penguins, and Happy Feet, it's time to move on to some new species of beast or fowl. Yet I must admit that of the four recent penguin-centered movies, Surf's Up is the most entertaining...

Is it unfair to compare Luc Besson to Michael Bay? Some would argue that it is but I’m not sure Besson would be among them. Both directors make the movies they want to make and, although there’s more artistry evident in Besson’s work, th...

There was hope in 2005 that Woody Allen had re-discovered his groove with the release of Match Point. Since then, however, he has slipped back into the sinkhole of mediocrity that kept him from greatness throughout most of the '90s and '00s. Unfo...

Maybe I just don't understand the French sense of humor. After all, they think Jerry Lewis is a comic genius. Whatever the reason, I rarely find "lowbrow" French comedies more than passably watchable (and, in the case of Little Indian, Big City, ...

Vivarium could have been written by Steven King, but it wasn’t. It could be an episode of The Twilight Zone, but it’s not. The movie, whose story/screenplay is co-credited to director Lorcan Finnegan and Garret Shanley, is a study in the p...

Disaster movies have always been popular, but I’ll leave it to psychologists to determine the reason why viewers react positively to tales of mayhem and catastrophe. The making of a disaster movie offers its creators an unusual set of challenge...