The original “Sinister” was an unnerving film that followed true crime writer Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) as he moved his family into a house where the previous occupants had been brutally murdered. While researching the crime, he discovered an old cardboard box of old 8mm home movies in the attic — horrifying depictions of multiple…
I will approach this review a little differently if you don’t mind. But allow me first to tell you a little story. I made an irrational choice. I started my review for Irrational Man before I even saw the movie. Irrational indeed. I started this review before I even knew whether this movie was going…
For the sake of full disclosure, I will say right now that I am no fan of “Gangsta Rap.” I am not an advocate of an art form that glorifies and promotes violence, profanity and the degradation of women, no matter how many of those things are an everyday part of the rappers’ lives. Using…
“The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” was a television series that ran from 1964 to 1968. It was actually misnamed because it concerned TWO men — an American, Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn, Oscar-nominated for “The Young Philadelphians”) and a Soviet, Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum, “A Night to Remember”) — who worked for an espionage organization called “U.N.C.L.E.”…
In an era where digital imaging allows anything from polymorphic robots to elongated super-limbs to be seamlessly integrated into live footage, animation could seem redundant. The old adage that “anything is possible in a cartoon” is no longer restricted to animation as anything is possible in any film. Yet we appear to be experiencing a…
Set in present-day New York, Five Star blends documentary and dramatic fiction as it tells the stories of Primo (James “Primo” Grant, a non-professional actor and former member of the Bloods street gang), a man fighting the tug-of-war battle between the needs of his family and duty to his gang, and John (John Diaz), a…
With film franchises rebooting every few years, it’s surprising that this series took so long to take the plunge. The first version, “Fantastic Four,” was released by 20th Century Fox in the summer of 2005, when critics called it, “’Spider-Man’ times four,” although at the time, I described it as “Spider-Man” *divided* by four, since…
