Chances are you’ve heard the title “One Chance” in movie news stories often over the past year or so. The musical comedy based on the true story of wannabe opera singer Paul Potts, who eventually won Simon Cowell’s “Britain’s Got Talent” TV competition show, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2013 and was […]
Two-time Academy Award winner Denzel Washington re-teams with “Training Day” director Antoine Fuqua to bring the 80s TV series “The Equalizer” to the big screen. It’s an action film with such over-the-top and unpredictable violence that it’s hard to imagine this version will ever make it onto broadcast TV. Sony is clearly counting on “The […]
“The Boxtrolls” is the latest stop-motion animation film distributed by Focus Features and brought to life by Laika, the makers of “Coraline” and “ParaNorman”. Both of those movies were nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar, and I’ll be very surprised if “The Boxtrolls” isn’t on the ballot this year. What, on the surface, appears […]
At every county fair there’s a challenging, exciting and exhausting corn maze. It’s filled with twists and turns, giving those who dare to enter the feeling that there’s no way out. “The Maze Runner” presents a lot of questions early on. And after going in circles for nearly two hours, the only way I hoped […]
Released nearly three years ago, “Dolphin Tale” was a smart, sophisticated and sweet live-action family film with genuine heart. I was surprised when Warner Bros. announced they were making a sequel, wondering if this saga could support a franchise. But since the first film was based on real life events, and more events took place […]
“The Identical” is a small, Christian-based drama with the most contradictory title of any film this year. In so many ways this movie is unlike any ever made. The set-up is o.k. – a young, married couple living in the South back in the 1930s, decides to give one of their newborn twin boys to […]
It’s ironic, yet hardly surprising that “The November Man” was buried by distributor Relativity Media at the end of August. The best thing that can be said about this effort, based on the 7th book in the “NM” series, “There Are No Spies”, written by late author Bill Granger, is that it’s appropriately titled, because […]
“If I Stay” is the “End of Summer of 2014 Tween/Teen Romantic Tearjerker”. Based on the popular 2009 novel by Gayle Forman, Chloe Grace Moretz (“Kick-Ass”) stars as 17-year-old Mia. She lives with her parents and younger brother Teddy in Portland, Oregon. Mia’s love of music was inherited from her mom and dad, but they […]
I give the team behind the new sports movie, “When the Game Stands Tall” a lot of credit for pulling-off something nearly impossible: they’ve made a film about the most successful high school football team of all-time that’s about as exciting as a 0-0 tie in an NFL exhibition game. “When the Game Stands Tall” […]
At one point in “The Giver”, Meryl Streep tells fellow Oscar winner Jeff Bridges: “When people have the freedom to choose – they choose wrong.” This seems to apply perfectly to the decision that Bob & Harvey Weinstein made to finance this big-screen adaptation of one of the most popular tween books of the last […]