I was surprised how much I enjoyed the new Star Wars film. At 152 minutes it is the longest of the series so far; its lead is reclusive Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), who has always been the least interesting character from […]
Continue reading »Category: Recent Releases
Darkest Hour (2017) ☆ ☆ ☆
Gary Oldman endured hours of makeup and prosthetic applications every day to portray British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, to great effect. Oldman is a chameleon of an actor, a guy who has been making movies for more than […]
Continue reading »Justice League (2017) ☆ ☆ 1/2
Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman are back together again in Justice League, joined for the first time by The Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg. This is DC’s ultimate superhero mash-up, at least until the next big to-do. While it is fun to […]
Continue reading »Lady Bird (2017) ☆ ☆ ☆
Actress Greta Gerwig makes her writing and directing debut with a coming-of-age story called Lady Bird. It is an honest, unflinching look at a young woman just reaching maturity, unsure of how to act or relate to others because, despite her […]
Continue reading »Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) ☆ ☆ ☆
The best movies present characters who are forced to change or adapt as their stories occur, naturally and understandably. As they confront their mistakes, or situations they cannot overcome (but often do, because it is the movies), their feelings and […]
Continue reading »Thor: Ragnarok (2017) ☆ ☆ 1/2
Of the current Marvel superheroes, Thor is perhaps the oddest, coming as he does from an altogether different area of the universe. It’s hard for me to reconcile his mystical realm with the “normal” world which Marvel presents to us […]
Continue reading »Murder on the Orient Express (2017) ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2
I was not looking forward to this adaptation of the famous Agatha Christie novel, only because I remember the ending of the first movie version from 1974 — once one knows the remarkable ending to this mystery it can never […]
Continue reading »Only the Brave (2017) ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
This is a terrific film, somewhat commercially constricted by its generic title. It’s the story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, a firefighting team from Prescott, Arizona, that became the first municipal firefighting unit to become certified as “hotshots,” the highest […]
Continue reading »A Bad Moms Christmas (2017) ☆ ☆
Those naughty ladies are back in a Christmas movie that will be gone and forgotten long before Christmas. This is a sequel of sorts to the 2016 comedy Bad Moms, with Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn reprising their roles […]
Continue reading »Blade Runner 2049 (2017) ☆ ☆ 1/2
If the world really does end up looking like it does in Blade Runner (1982) and this belated sequel, we’re all in trouble. I must confess that I’ve never been a big Blade Runner fan. I love science-fiction but these noirish, ultra-stylized […]
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