Highly personal character-driven films really rely on the character in question to be interesting enough — or quirky enough, sexy enough, scary enough or something else enough — to keep our attention through the minutiae of their lives. I’m on […]
Continue reading »Author: admin
Mother’s Day (2016) ☆ ☆
Director Garry Marshall has made a third or fourth career out of making movies based on sentimental holidays. He’s made Valentine’s Day (2010), New Year’s Eve (2011) and now Mother’s Day. Can’t wait for Flag Day or Arbor Day. Marshall’s […]
Continue reading »Captain America: Civil War (2016) ☆ ☆ 1/2
Another big superhero movie comes to town, and once again I cannot get too excited. Comic book fans love this stuff, but it seems about as arbitrary to me as the world of magic, where anything can happen at any […]
Continue reading »A Hologram for the King (2016) ☆ ☆ ☆
Part culture clash, part character study, A Hologram for the King is a complex film built upon a very thin premise. The premise is that an Information Technology salesman (Tom Hanks) journeys to Saudi Arabia to persuade its ruler to purchase […]
Continue reading »The Lunatic’ler (2016) ☆ ☆ 1/2
Most of what I watch, and what I think most movie-goers watch, is mainstream entertainment. The stuff that costs millions of dollars to produce, dominates the entertainment landscape and sometimes actually creeps into the culture. But for every mainstream movie […]
Continue reading »Criminal (2016) ☆ ☆ 1/2
Criminal is the second Ryan Reynolds personality-switching movie in the last two years; the third, if you count Deadpool (the other was Self/Less). If there really is such a thing as a personality-switching genre, then Reynolds has absolutely cornered it. However, […]
Continue reading »Network (1976) ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Of the really good movie crop of 1976, which includes All the President’s Men, Network, Rocky, Taxi Driver, Carrie, Marathon Man, The Shootist, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Silver Streak and The Pink Panther Strikes Again, to name some obvious favorites of my […]
Continue reading »Network (1976)
by Barb Lentz. The five movies Bob provided me from which to choose were these: A Face in the Crowd (1957) The King of Comedy (1983) Mark of the Vampire (1935) Network (1976) Topkapi (1964) All of these […]
Continue reading »Hello, My Name is Doris (2016) ☆ 1/2
Actresses over 40 often complain, or certainly used to, about the lack of good roles for them. That situation has improved, yet along with the good roles come others that are stupid or misguided, in my opinion, and this is […]
Continue reading »Eye in the Sky (2016) ☆ ☆ 1/2
Modern warfare is wholly different than it used to be, as evidenced by Eye in the Sky, in which suspected terrorists in Kenya are targeted for capture by British and American forces, and then as the situation escalates, termination. But this […]
Continue reading »