I am often chastised for expecting children’s film to be more than childish, but I think there are enough precedents to show that films which often appeal to younger crowds can also be pleasant for their parents (“Inside Out,” “Minions” and “Shaun the Sheep” come to mind in 2015 alone). That is certainly not my…
It isn’t often that the landscape of a motion picture becomes as integral as the acting, writing or direction, but in the newest Ridley Scott (“Prometheus”) outer space adventure, The Martian, the planet’s crimson hues, frozen nights and horrifying sand/dust storms bring the story of an explorer stranded there with little help of survival to…
You’d think the Maze would’ve been enough of an adventure. A group of boys lived in the Glade, a green valley surrounded by intimidating stone walls that trapped them in every night, and they never knew when their supplies would run out or when the next new recruit would appear. Each night, a select few…
Films inspired by video games usually fall into two categories: Bad (“Doom,” “Super Mario Bros.,” “Tomb Raider”) or terrible: (“Mortal Kombat,” “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li,” “Max Payne”). Hitman: Agent 47 (a remake of the 2007 picture starring Timothy Olyphant) neatly fits into that last category. There are many reasons for this, including poor…
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…
It’s taken a ton of effort but it’s finally here . . . well at least the first trailer for it is. And as expected, Deadpool isn’t going to be mincing any words or actions. After all, his face looks like “Freddy Krueger face-fucked a topographical map of Utah.” That’s just one of the after…
You can say Po, the lovable panda of “Kung Fu Panda” and “Kung Fu Panda 2” is a lot of things, smart just isn’t one of them. Apparently, it isn’t a strong suit of his birth father’s either. In this third installment aptly titled Kung Fu Panda 3, Po (voiced again by Jack Black) now…
