Francis Annan’s Escape from Pretoria describes the real-life adventures of political captives Tim Jenkin and Steven Lee as they attempt to leave the titular prison before their sentences are up. Set in the apartheid era of South Africa, the film spends most of its run-time within the walls of the prison itself, leaning on a…
With The Legend of Tarzan, Tarzan meets the cast of “Planet of the Apes” and no one comes out looking good. To this reporter’s count, there have been more than 30 screen adaptations of the semi-classic Edgar Rice Burroughs tale of “Tarzan, King of the Apes,” from the first appearance in 1918 (with silent star…
Frank is a man of many walls. He’s been building them for as long as he can remember, but it was only during his early teens that he actually got his first one made by his dad for a costume party that never was. Frank wears a big papier-mâché head over his mask — a…
In case you didn’t know it — Kenneth Branagh is a director who really grasps the magic of the screen. Whether it’s through Shakespearean adaptations like “Much Ado About Nothing” and “Hamlet,” or one of the larger tent-poles like “Thor” and “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit,” viewers can be sure of one thing: They’re in for…
It’s been 12 years since Jack Ryan has been on the big screen. Since then, Jason Bourne was introduced and conquered and James Bond was rebooted to follow suit. Now, with the Russians plotting to cripple the American economic markets, and Shakespearean director Kenneth Branagh (“Thor”) directing Chris Pine (“Star Trek Into Darkness”) as Tom…
They tried Ben Affleck as as the young Jack Ryan 11 years ago in “The Sum of All Fears” but that experiment didn’t work out so well. Today, we get our first taste of Chris Pine as the infamous operative in the trailer for Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. Well actually, he doesn’t start out as…
Finales of this magnitude usually come about once every few years for television shows, but very rarely for feature films. However, this is most certainly the case for the epic conclusion to the “Harry Potter” series, filled with equal parts fan-servicing closure and genuinely emotive scenes for those less devout followers like myself. Personally, Harry…
