Interestingly, it is the audience who seems to be the ones getting hustled in director Chris Addison’s forgettable feminine con-artist comedy, The Hustle. In it, Oscar winner Anne Hathaway (“Les Misérables”) and funny fireball Rebel Wilson (“Isn’t It Romantic”) are paired as a couple of cute scammers looking to manipulate the finances out of clueless…
Not to let a powerful property die, Paramount Pictures brings the first tease to Terminator: Dark Fate, a sequel that follows directly after “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” Details are scarce, but Linda Hamilton returns as Sarah Connor to face off against an even deadlier series of liquid-metal Terminator that appears to have the ability to…
In many ways, director Dome Karukoski’s Tolkien is a fine film — a definitive sampling of J.R.R. Tolkien’s formative years and a nicely fleshed-out character study. Yet, it also plays as programming you might find on a PBS “Masterpiece” program, with nicely defined Edwardian settings, fine period costumes and impressive performances all around. Still, similar…
Dennis Quaid’s perverse Peeping Tom is the central psycho in director Deon Taylor’s home invasion hokum, The Intruder. Formulaic and faceless, Taylor’s (“Traffik”) domestic drama merely echoes the familiar foundations of other generic goosebump-instilling thrillers chronicling the exploits of a stalking menace out to majorly inconvenience the tranquility of a passionate married couple. From yesteryear’s…
Isn’t It Romantic is extremely self aware, breaking the fourth wall with more frequency than “Deadpool.” It knows the tropes that define the rom-com genre and the rules at play. Thus, there is a desire to establish itself as something different. The problem here is — it can’t. It functions on the complexity level of…
Avengers: Endgame brings the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s (MCU) third phase to a close in splendid fashion, designating much of its three-hour runtime to character arcs and the wider narrative, versus intergalactic fireworks and fisticuffs. In fact, Anthony and Joe Russo’s finale is an intelligent film, introducing novel MCU concepts, “hard” science and a supervillain worthy…
The continued effort to update and bring “live-action” realism to their classics (e.g., “Dumbo,” “The Jungle Book,” “Beauty and the Beast,”) continues for Disney with The Lion King. It follows the same premise as the 1994 animated feature (as well as “Kimba the White Lion” from which it was lifted) in which a young lion…
