YABBA-DABBA-DO! An elaborate, expensive and commercially speaking very successful live-action adaptation of the classic animated 1960-1966 TV series – but it can’t escape a plastic and rubbery feeling as it’s tried perhaps a bit too hard to get close to the original. Kids might like it better (although the original should impress them more); it’s … Continue reading The Flintstones
A UNIVERSE WTHOUT BOUNDARIES NEEDS HEROES WITHOUT LIMITS. Centuries into the future, Valerian and Laureline (Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevingne) are agents working for a police force on Alpha, a space station containing millions of humans and other space races that’s suddenly threatened by an unknown force. Two decades after The Fifth Element, Luc Besson returns … Continue reading Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
As the Berlin Wall is about to fall in 1989, MI6 spy Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) is sent to the city to cooperate with the station chief (James McAvoy) after the murder of an agent. Former stuntman turned director David Leitch worked on John Wick (2014) and this action thriller has similar ingredients. It is … Continue reading Atomic Blonde
RETHINK YOUR HEROES. Optimus Prime and Megatron are long gone, but new Transformers keep coming back to Earth; Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) finds new allies in his quest to learn why. The fifth and worst of the franchise (so far) relies on a lot of comedy that falls flat (including a butler bot voiced by … Continue reading Transformers: The Last Knight
THE INSIDE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST MANHUNT. When two bombs go off during the 2013 Boston Marathon, the whole city (including Police Sergeant Tommy Saunders (Mark Wahlberg)) become involved in the hunt for the terrorists, two brothers. The third time Peter Berg and Wahlberg collaborate on a reality-based drama about Men Surviving a Crisis … Continue reading Patriots Day
ALL HAIL THE KING. In 1973, a military expedition takes a group of scientists and representatives of a mysterious organization called Monarch to an island in the Pacific that harbors many secrets. The giant ape is brought back to the screen as part of a cinematic monster universe, following Godzilla (2014). This 3D adventure keeps … Continue reading Kong: Skull Island
A COMEDY BEYOND BELIEF. After getting hitched, a former career criminal and a police officer (Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter) learn they can’t have kids… and decide to kidnap one of a furniture magnate’s five babies, the ”Arizona Quints”. The director, writers, cinematographer and composer behind Blood Simple. (1984) returned for a comedy that borrows from … Continue reading Raising Arizona
MONSTERS COME IN MANY FORMS. After a car crash, Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) wakes up in a concrete room, chained to a wall; a man (John Goodman) who brings her food tells her that there’s been an ”attack” and that he saved her life. Not a direct sequel to Cloverfield (2008), but the filmmakers describe … Continue reading 10 Cloverfield Lane
EIGHT LEGS, TWO FANGS AND AN ATTITUDE. After moving to the small town of Canaima, California, hoping to open a practice, doctor Ross Jennings (Jeff Daniels) looks into a series of mysterious deaths that might be caused by spiders… Frequent Spielberg collaborator Frank Marshall made his directing debut with this loving, humorous homage to old … Continue reading Arachnophobia
THEY FIGURED HE WAS A LAZY TIME WASTING SLACKER. THEY WERE RIGHT. L.A. slacker Jeffrey Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) goes to see a millionaire who has the same name as him to get compensation after an unfortunate encounter with two thugs, but is drawn into a kidnapping case… The Coen Brothers’ attempt to have a little … Continue reading The Big Lebowski
DECEPTION IS DANGEROUS. DESIRE IS DEADLY. In a novel attempt to catch a serial killer who shoots men after finding them in the newspaper singles column, New York city detective Frank Keller (Al Pacino) places his own ad in the paper… On first sight, this thriller doesn’t look like much; the final revelation of the … Continue reading Sea of Love
THE ONLY WAY OUT IS ALL IN. Literature professor Jim Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) is on a downhill slide and has amassed an impressive gambling debt; after borrowing money from a criminal, it gets even worse. A remake of the 1974 movie that hardly seems worth the effort, in spite of good production values and a … Continue reading The Gambler
SCHOOL NEVER LOOKED THIS SCARY. This prequel to Monsters, Inc. (2001) takes us back to school; the story has our two monstrous heroes meeting for the first time as students attending Monsters University. They take an instant disliking to each other, but are forced to work together as a team when they’re close to getting kicked … Continue reading Monsters University
