The feature film adaptation of the popular PlayStation video game franchise “Uncharted” has been in development for so long that star Mark Wahlberg aged-out of his original role. Wahlberg was initially cast to play heroic adventurer Nathan Drake. But, with this project finally making it to the big screen, Wahlberg is playing older heroic adventurer […]
Early on in “Jackass Forever”, Johnny Knoxville says, “Twenty years later, we’re still doing the same stupid shit.” And that pretty much sums things up. 49-year-old Knoxville, 46-year-old Steve-O and other veteran “Jackass” members return — along with some newbies — in this latest adventure in self-torture for laughs. They subject themselves in a series […]
Roland Emmerich makes disaster movies. And he’s pretty good at it. “Independence Day”. “The Day After Tomorrow”. “2012”. “Independence Day: Resurgence” (which was an actual disaster of a movie). He also set Washington D.C. ablaze in “White House Down”, gave us an action-packed depiction of the Battle of Midway and even let Godzilla unleash his […]
Writer/director Michel Franco’s “Sundown” was designed to emit discussion. Neil (Tim Roth) is a wealthy Brit on vacation in Acapulco with his sister and her two kids. About 10 minutes in, we get the film’s juiciest, most shocking moment. This is a truly guilty pleasure section. You not only feel badly about what’s happening — […]
This fifth installment in the “Scream” series is a slasher/horror movie about slasher/horror movies. Its title is simply “Scream”. If you’re wondering why it’s not “Scream 5” or even “5cream”, well, there’s a joke about halfway into the film that answers that question. It’s one of the sharper self-aware moments in a script that’s packed […]
Last year I binged the three “Matrix” movies — one a night for straight three nights. Knowing the fourth was coming (at some point), I needed to get plugged into this world. Some fans like all three films equally (personally, I rank them 1, then 3, then 2). Others see the original “Matrix” as far […]
“Being the Ricardos” is writer/director Aaron Sorkin’s dramatization of one week of production of the iconic TV series, “I Love Lucy”. The episode depicted is “Ethel and Fred Fight”, named on scripts as Season 2 Episode 4. (In reality, “Fred and Ethel Fight” was the 22nd episode of Season 1, filmed in early 1952. While […]
Even with one of the most star-studded casts of the year, director Guillermo Del Toro’s follow-up to his Oscar winning “The Shape of Water” isn’t bound for a similar awards season fate. “Nightmare Alley” plays out as three completely different movies, each running about 45 minutes. So I’m going to do something rare: review and […]
I really wanted to like “Belfast”. But it’s difficult to get past the numerous odd technical elements in writer/director Kenneth Branagh’s ode to his days growing-up in Northern Ireland in the late ’60s. The film opens with a contemporary shot of Belfast, in color. Then the flashback saga begins and the chroma shifts to black […]
Edgar Wright is a director known for breaking the genre conventions of comedy, romance, action, thriller and even “end of the world” films. This time he twists-up the “coming of age” story AND horror with “Last Night in Soho”. Thomasin McKenzie had her breakthrough moment opposite Ben Foster in 2018’s “Leave No Trace”. She followed […]