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…
With a cut and a kick and an upbeat note, Damien Chazelle sure paints a pretty picture of classic Hollywood musical nostalgia, but La La Land is more plastic pastiche than poignant portrait. It’s a technical marvel that’s dramatically weightless, a boldly bravura effort from writer/director Damien Chazelle and his crew that’s also too cutesy…
Florence Foster Jenkins singing voice was flat and off-key, yet her generosity to others, friendship with music greats such as Arturo Toscanini, and love of music brought happiness to many during the dark days of World War II. Labeled by some intemperate critics as “the worst singer in the world,” she is given something of…
Why Him? The real question is why me? Why am I always searching for the seemingly most elusive item on Earth, not a holy grail or world peace, but a decently funny comedy that can a) make me laugh consistently and, b) not devolve into a juvenile series of f-words, toilet humor and disgusting situations….
The cerebral time-travel thriller Counter Clockwise is quite a piece of work, with a punchy script and tight editing and direction, all set to an eerie score. If you enjoyed Shane Carruth’s “Primer,” take a gander at this one — it has all of the intriguing metaphysical concepts, but is a little easier to follow….
The film Trolls opened several weeks ago and this review is a bit late, but it should not matter, as few people will see or care much for this lukewarm knockoff of the Smurfs franchise (which is a lukewarm entity in and of itself). The Rotten Tomatoes synopsis reads: “DreamWorks Animation’s ‘TROLLS’ is an irreverent…
Not all high school movies are the same. But if you were to map out the archetypal characters based on the films of the last thirty years, you’d probably come up with a list close to this one: You have your main character. They could be male or female, but they must be unpopular They…
