In the city of Timbuktu, the fundamentalist Islamist group Ansar Dine (“defenders of the faith”), wearing black flags to cover their faces, decimated shrines, Dogon wood sculptures, and World Heritage sites, considering them to be examples of idolatry, a sin in Islam. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, Abderrahmane Sissako’s (“Bamako”) Timbuktu…
Cameron Crowe’s latest film, Aloha, his first larger scale project since 2011’s “We Bought a Zoo,” does not, unfortunately, come with the zest and alacrity of it or some of his earlier better works, like “Jerry Maguire.” It is light-hearted, well-intentioned (Hawaiian virtues are espoused) fare tailored to an audience that sees space as something…
San Andreas stars Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson (although ‘The Rock’ is no longer a necessary addition to his name to know who he is) as admirable Search and Rescue helicopter pilot Ray Gaines. He’s the kind of person you want to have around when a pickle jar can’t be opened or when the largest magnitude…
Lack of originality is a major lament of many horror fans in 2015; we devour each and every new film that’s tossed our way, hoping against hope that THIS will be the horror movie that breaks the trend, that THIS will be the one that reminds us what it was like to be really creeped…
What occurred in “The Maze Runner” was just Phase 1. In its follow-up, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, Phase 2 is the agenda and it promises to be more challenging than anything the Gladers have dealt with before. It also promises to deliver more for viewers too as the world expands and new players (and…
Set in fictional Wessex County in south-west England in the 1870s, Thomas Vinterberg’s (“The Hunt”) adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s novel Far from the Madding Crowd chronicles the ups and downs of Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan, “Inside Llewyn Davis”), a smart, headstrong woman who is fiercely proud of her independence when it comes to choosing suitors….
Probably one of the more eagerly awaited sequels in recent memory, Avengers: Age Of Ultron crafted by Marvel Studios/Disney and directed by Joss Whedon, makes a decent entry into the second-film-of-the-franchise market, but does not supersede the original in acting, writing or humor (so one can forget the “The Empire Strikes Back,” “Superman II” and…
