Search for Theodore Shapiro

In a curious way, Snatched is a little like an Amy Schumer stand-up routine: sometimes edgy, occasionally hilarious, and lessened by the bits that fall flat. Unlike Trainwreck, which featured strong writing and an opportunity for Schumer to di...

All animated films are not created equal. Some aspire for greatness, seeking to bring wonders to the screen that live-action can’t fully capture. Others exist for purely commercial means – cynical brand-management put together not to touch...

Summer is the season of bloat and the trait is evident in Spy's excessive running length. At about 90 minutes, this would have been a fresh, breezy action-comedy. However, with an additional half-hour of padding, viewers are forced to endure stre...

Call it the Grumpy Old Man syndrome. In recent years, there has been a spate of movies about hoary curmudgeons bonding with kids. From Bad Santa to Bad Grandpa, it's all about oldsters learning life lessons from youngsters and vice versa. St. Vin...

The mining of old television shows continues, and, while one wouldn't expect much from a movie version of the vintage late-1970s TV cop series, Starsky and Hutch, this is one time when the filmmakers have uncovered some surprisingly rich ore. The ...

State and Main offers prolific playwright/filmmaker David Mamet his latest chance to re-invent himself. Mamet, who is perhaps best known for his twisty thrillers (House of Games, The Spanish Prisoner) and tense psychological dramas (Glengarry Glen...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single movie in possession of a good box office fortune must be in want of a sequel. (With apologies to Jane Austen.)There can be little other explanation why, some twenty years after the release of th...

When one approaches something like The Housemaid, one has to go with reasonable expectations. Freida McFadden's book, a perfect summer beach read, is the kind of page-turner that can easily be consumed in a few lengthy sessions. Transforming it fr...

The Roses is not a remake of the 1989 film The War of the Roses, which starred Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito (and was directed by DeVito), although both movies draw from the same source material: Warren Adler’s novel. Di...

2016’s Trolls, an animated confection based on the toy line, was a pleasant surprise, both in terms of its appeal and its box office prowess. The latter (as much as the former) determined that there would be a sequel. At one point, distribut...