One’s enjoyment (or better yet, interest) in Legend, as written and directed by Brian Helgeland (an Academy Award winner for “L.A. Confidential” and a Razzie winner for “The Postman”), will most likely hinge on one’s ability to understand the deep Cockney accent everyone speaks here (even a universal translator would not help with much of…
The signs for Live by Night are promising. Ben Affleck’s previous directorial offerings — “Gone Baby Gone,” “The Town,” “Argo” — showed ever increasing confidence and skill. The period gangster sub-genre has delivered such classics as “The Godfather,” “The Godfather: Part II” and “Once Upon a Time in America.” The source material, Dennis Lehane’s epic,…
Two bad decisions irrevocably alter the lives of two families when a pair of police officers pull over a suspicious vehicle on a forest road in Felix Ahrens’ taut, tense, terrific short Where the Woods End. What first seems simple shatters into several jagged pieces of moral complexity, all because the driver of the pulled-over…
A confusing, convoluted plot, Ron Howard’s uninspired direction and less than stellar acting mar Inferno, the third installment of the popular (at least as far as book sales go) “Da Vinci Code” franchise, but then again, we all know about some of the third-film duds in cinematic history (“Superman 3,” “Rocky 3,” “The Hangover Part…
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…
There’s certainly no accounting as to why Ben Affleck (“Gone Girl”) would choose this, The Accountant, a tepid and convoluted thriller to star in, but all I know is I wish I could deduct the two-plus hours I spent at the cinema to see it; time I will never get back in a refund next…
It’s difficult to make a comedy these days without it devolving into either juvenile slapstick buffoonery or an ignorant vulgarity-laden vehicle for the nation’s lowest common denominators. It’s especially hard when such a film’s protagonist is so completely devoid of intelligence or even common sense as to be totally unrelatable and unsympathetic throughout. Oh, and…
