For a film franchise that began in 1931 (with Boris Karloff in the original title role) and includes literally dozens of pictures, there are still some new things I learned from this latest edition (directed by Alex Kurtzman, “People Like Us”) of The Mummy. For instance, mummies and other otherworldly entities — even though buried…
One of the highlights of “Captain America: Civil War” is headlining his own adventure, and it looks bonkers. The teaser for Black Panther, a substantially better representation of the project than the poster, features vivid imagery, an intriguing tribal-versus-modern setting plus just enough information about a conflict that can affect more than T’Challa’s (Chadwick Boseman,…
There is an idealized Wonder Woman. It’s vague and often inconsistent in description, but seemingly ethereal in public consciousness, in spite of any prior comic book knowledge, or lack thereof. I would compare the cultural assumption to Superman, and the balancing act the original Richard Donner film had to pull off. The benefit of finally…
Lady Macbeth is an exercise in contradiction. It is a costume drama, a genre long associated with restraint and composure. It is also a gothic romance, which has a long association with passion and melodrama. These generic tropes work together as the passion of the melodrama pushes against the constraints of the costume drama, often…
Time to head to port. Now. With its “final adventure” tag, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales glows with a compelling enough reason to re-rendezvous with Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp, “Alice Through the Looking Glass”), omitting how it will reward attendance with hollowed-out booty. Though ridding the stifled scope and static…
As Arthurian films have gone in recent years, the most epic in my opinion is probably “Excalibur” from 1981; the most interesting one is the 1995 Richard Gere vehicle, “First Knight”; the most fun was the 1963 animated “The Sword in the Stone”; while the best is easily 1975’s classic, “Monty Python and the Holy…
For some, watching an M. Night Shyamalan film is an experience that fills them with dread. But this dread can be separated in two distinct camps: First, the good kind of dread that accompanied Shyamalan’s first blockbusters in Hollywood — “The Sixth Sense,” “Unbreakable,” “Signs” — all quietly unsettling thrillers that, despite some weaknesses, still…
