“Red One” is a holiday sci-fi action comedy, though I don’t particularly think it’s funny… though I don’t particularly think that’s a problem with the movie. This is Amazon-MGM’s big, $250 million holiday extravaganza starring Dwayne Johnson as Cal, the bodyguard and assistant to Santa Claus (“Red”), played by J.K. Simmons. He’s definitely jacked. They […]
Five-time Academy Award winner John Williams is arguably the greatest film composer of all-time. A new documentary on his life and career, “Music by John Williams” (now streaming on Disney+), is one of my favorite movie experiences of 2024. It recently won the Critics Choice Documentary Award for Best Music Documentary, a well-deserved honor. Director […]
“The Gutter” is the kind of comedy you’d probably find on Cable TV at 1am. It has that spirit. You flip through the channels and go, “What is this goofy, absurd sports comedy?” It’s wild, outrageous, random and ridiculous… but I stuck with it, and it’s far from the worst movie experience of 2024. There […]
“Absolution” is the latest Liam Neeson action drama, though there actually really isn’t a lot of action in this one. He plays a guy called Thug — an aging gangster and former boxer. His boss for the past 30 years is played by Ron Perlman in a meaningless role. Thug begins to forget his name, […]
Out of the 180 new movies I’ve seen so far in 2024, “Piece by Piece” is definitely one of the 10 best. This is a documentary on the life and career of prolific music artist Pharrell Williams. And he wanted this doc to be entirely in LEGO, as he explains to Oscar winning director Morgan […]
Academy Award winner Kate Winslet stars in “Lee” as photojournalist Lee Miller, who covered WWII, primarily for Vogue. There’s some occasional humanity to Winslet’s performance. Andy Samberg, in a rare dramatic role, is very good as fellow photojournalist David Scherman. I could see Samberg (best known for “Saturday Night Live”, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and a bunch […]
“Wolfs” is a new action comedy from Jon Watts, the director of one of the highest-grossing movies of all-time, “Spider-Man: No Way Home”. And even with all that box office and instant iconic Marvel movie success, Sony decided (at the last-minute) that “Wolfs” shouldn’t go to theaters (beyond a 50-ish cinema, one-week, limited release) and […]
“Transformers One” is my favorite animated film of 2024 so far. I don’t want to give away much of the story. What I will say is that it’s the origin story of these Transformers characters, including Optimus Prime (voiced by Chris Hemsworth) and Megatron (Brian Tyree Henry). They were initially friends. How do we get […]
“The Critic” is a classic case of a fantastic performance and lead character in a movie that doesn’t rise to the same level of impact. This is an enjoyable dramatic thriller, and I don’t completely hate the directions it goes in. But when director Anand Tucker and writer Patrick Marber’s adaptation of Anthony Quinn’s 2015 […]
“His Three Daughters” stars Carrie Coon as Katie, Elizabeth Olsen as Christina and Natasha Lyonne as Rachel. They are three sisters who have their father in hospice care in a New York City apartment. He’s dying, and they’re there for the end. They’re told by the hospice care workers (who are named Angel and Mirabella, […]