The mission brief to Ghosts of War is simple: Five American soldiers must defend a chateau in 1944 Normandy, that, as luck would have it, is apparently haunted. Sadly, however, this trope-laden plot is the only pillar of stability in an incomprehensible mess of a film, which burns like a ragged bullet-wound to the stomach….
This blood-is-thicker-than-water melodrama, A Violent Separation, presents itself as a study in the ties that bind, a familial tale that is unfortunately all too familiar. In it, a cop brother named Norman (Brenton Thwaites, “Gods of Egypt”) helps his shadier brother named Ray (Ben Robson, “The Boy”) out of a particularly horrible jam, with each…
Time to head to port. Now. With its “final adventure” tag, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales glows with a compelling enough reason to re-rendezvous with Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp, “Alice Through the Looking Glass”), omitting how it will reward attendance with hollowed-out booty. Though ridding the stifled scope and static…
Forgive me if I have a “The Ten Commandments” flashback for a moment. The 1956 film (the last directed by the legendary Cecil B. DeMille) was one the the ultimate Biblical treatments to take place in Egypt. With Academy Award winners Charlton Heston (“Ben-Hur”) and Yul Brynner (“The King and I”), plus actors who should…
Suppose the ultimate version of Nostradamus was thrown onto the silver screen. Now suppose that his specialty was not simply predicting the future, but also holding and carrying the knowledge of all mankind. This is the basic premise to Phillip Noyce’s film, The Giver and Jeff Bridges (“True Grit”) plays this mix of political adviser,…
Everyone’s invited to Disney’s PG pity-party Maleficent. Directed in the cadence of a Lana Del Rey song (who, coincidentally, shows up during the credits with a closing track), this live-action re-imagining of the 1959 animated classic “Sleeping Beauty” has enough gothic romance, leather gowns, and teen gloominess to attract a substantial summer audience. Surprisingly, however,…
Oculus is a sloppy horror movie about a possessed mirror and the vengeance that a grown woman, whose family was destroyed by the mirror when she was a girl, attempts to wreak upon it. There are a couple of shock moments — not shocking, just shock — but for the most part the plot dreamed…
