After two heralded breezy and finger-snapping editions, the sassy songbirds of the Barden Bellas are back for a supposedly final installment, and sad to say it is not a charm the third time around in the lame, toe-tapping Pitch Perfect 3. In 2012 movie audience giddily fell for the vocalizing vixens of “Pitch Perfect” making…
One of the important messages of Thank You for Your Service, first-time director Jason Hall’s perceptive drama about the physical and psychological effects of war, is that returning veterans need to be able to talk about what happened in combat and how they have been personally affected by it. Too often, however, friends or loved…
Movies have been telling stories about dogs in the military since Rin Tin Tin starred in silent films like “A Dog of the Regiment” way back in the 1920s. Those were made-up stories that turned “Rinny” into one of Hollywood’s biggest money-makers of the pre-sound era (supposedly even getting him the most votes for Best…
When American audiences last saw our diminutive chopsocky champion, Jackie Chan, he was kicking butt and taking numbers alongside “Jackass” and “The Dukes of Hazzard” star Johnny Knoxville in the flaccid and forgettable 2016 voltage vehicle “Skiptrace.” Well, the sixty-something martial arts megastar has found yet another frenetic farce to strut his stuff as he…
If one likes their World War II films with a healthy dose of F-words, open lesbianism, cocaine use and sexual acts too numerous to count, then the newest Paramount release, Allied, is certainly the picture for you. A mix of “Casablanca,” “Hope and Glory,” with even a little “Inglourious Basterds” thrown in, this romcom war/thriller…
From its opening shot of a house both sleek and warm to its transcendent finale, Arrival arrests attention with a grasp that is firm yet ephemeral. It is a sublime and profound experience, touching its audience on an emotional, intellectual and spiritual level, a film that declares both its originality and its ancestry. And what…
Well, the title of this action-thriller, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, warns you to “never go back,” but when the first movie bankrolls more than $100 million, that adage seems to go right out the proverbial window. Part of the fun (although some would say “ridiculousness”) of films like “Jack Reacher” — and the James…
