WATCH YOUR ASSETS. Wall Street tycoon Michelle Darnell (Melissa McCarthy) loses everything; after a stint in prison, she moves in with her former assistant (Kristen Bell) and tries to build a new empire… As in most movies by McCarthy and her husband Ben Falcone, the star’s talents are well employed – this looks like a … Continue reading The Boss
As the ending neared for the most talked-about TV series on the planet, its most die-hard fans and some of America’s most unforgiving television critics were piling it on. The show wasn’t as smart as it used to be, now it was all about action. The writing wasn’t true to how these people viewed the … Continue reading Game of Thrones: There Be Dragons
HIS REAL LIFE WAS THE BIGGEST FANTASY OF ALL. In 1993, reporter and recovering alcoholic Danny Tate (Jamie Dornan) reluctantly agrees to interview Hervé Villechaize (Peter Dinklage), the hard-partying former star of TV hit Fantasy Island. Sacha Gervasi worked several years on getting this story filmed, based on an interview he had made with Villechaize … Continue reading My Dinner with Hervé
WHY SO ANGRY? On Bird Island, Red, who’s attending an anger management class, becomes suspicious of a boat full of green-colored pigs that arrives one day; what are they after…? After the success of The Lego Movie (2014) there would obviously be more attempts to take a lucrative commercial franchise and try to make something … Continue reading The Angry Birds Movie
WHERE WILL YOU BE, WHEN IT ALL ENDS? Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) crash-lands on Earth in time to let the other Avengers know that he and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) have just faced the formidable villain Thanos (Josh Brolin) and that he’s coming to find the rest of the all-powerful Infinity Stones. The third movie in the … Continue reading Avengers: Infinity War
I had the opportunity to see this film at an early stage; it had been screened only at the film festivals in Venice and Toronto. I enjoyed it very much, but felt a little conflicted afterwards, something that stayed with me over the night and was reflected in a too-hasty original review for this … Continue reading Three Billboards: Pain and Redemption
GAME ON. In 1982, a time capsule containing among other things arcade games, is launched into space; three decades later, aliens use those games to attack Earth… The filmmakers expanded a 2010 short film for this comedy that looks like it wants to be a new Ghostbusters (1984), as it assembles a motley team (including … Continue reading Pixels
EVERYONE HAS A BAD DAY. HENRY HAS ONE EVERY DAY. When the hot-tempered Henry Altmann (Robin Williams) is told that he has a brain aneurysm, he provokes the exhausted doctor (Mila Kunis) to the degree that she tells him he only has 90 minutes left to live. This remake of the Israeli movie The 92 … Continue reading The Angriest Man in Brooklyn
EVERY HERO, EVERY POWER WILL UNITE. In 2023, most mutants have been wiped out by man-made robots called Sentinels; with the help of Shadowcat (Ellen Page), Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is sent back in time to 1973 to kill the Sentinel program before it’s born. A sequel to three X-Men movies (The Last Stand, Wolverine and … Continue reading X-Men: Days of Future Past
When the continent breaks apart, Manny and his family and friends are separated; the quest to reunite is fraught with dangers. Much like the third movie, this fourth chapter is in 3D and was a huge hit… but the seams are beginning to show. A sense of fatigue is creeping into the increasingly outlandish adventures … Continue reading Ice Age: Continental Drift
THIS IS ONE SAD FAMILY. As Aaron Barnes (Chris Rock) is preparing for the funeral of his father, it is gearing up to be a disaster. Only three years after Frank Oz’s hilarious British comedy comes the remake, directed by Neil LaBute who’d already made a mess out of the Wicker Man remake. As it is very close … Continue reading Death at a Funeral
LAST RITES… AND WRONGS. When his father dies, Daniel (Matthew Macfadyen) arranges the funeral, but from the moment when the wrong body is delivered to the ceremony everything goes awry. Comedy veteran Frank Oz strikes back with another hilarious movie, this time a classically structured farce set in Britain, appropriately enough. The story takes place almost … Continue reading Death at a Funeral
A NEW AGE HAS BEGUN. One year after leaving Narnia, the Pevensie children return to the magical land, but one thousand years have passed there and they have to help Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes) reclaim his rightful throne. The second film in the Narnia franchise is another engaging adventure with heavy Lord of the Rings … Continue reading The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
