Caught between action flick thrills and hefty existential drama, Timothy Woodward Jr.’s film, Silencer, ends up in an unconvincing purgatory which neither excites or provokes. We open with a squad of US Marines in Iraq. It’s all radio banter and “Copy that!” and it looks like it’s been filmed with sunglasses over the lens, so…
It is a bold filmmaker who trusts film as film and allows the medium to communicate without recourse to exposition and dialogue. Such a filmmaker is Lynne Ramsey (“We Need to Talk About Kevin”), whose latest offering, You Were Never Really Here, is a brilliantly brutal assembly of image and sound that never displays any…
Does anyone want to play a game? Shake your head if it’s Max (Jason Bateman, “Office Christmas Party”) and Annie (Rachel McAdams, “Doctor Strange”) asking, unless losing is your thing. In a slickly assembled montage, the couple is revealed to be “all day, every day” champions of trivia, scrabble and charades. But they’re only game-night…
One thing you can say about the fourth collaboration of Spanish filmmaker Jaume Collet-Serra and his avenging one-man army lead Liam Neeson: They certainly know how to revisit a movie formula and belabor it to death. In the stylish yet tepid transport mystery/thriller The Commuter the concocted suspense is needlessly derailed for yet another exploration…
Director Simon West (“The Expendables 2”) does the name of British comedy a disservice in his latest turn, Gun Shy, while simultaneously doing no favors for his own reputation as a formidable name in action. Billed as an action-comedy, Gun Shy gives us little of either, which is why its biggest problem can be summed…
In 1973, if any 16-year-old boy were to be kidnapped on the streets of Rome, it might warrant a brief mention in the papers. If the boys’ last name was Getty, however, it would be a major story followed closely throughout the world. Written by David Scarpa and based on John Pearson’s book “Painfully Rich:…
There are four words that everyone should know in their respective language: Don’t mess with mama. That goes for bears (or other wild animals) and in this particular case, Halle Berry (Oscar winner, “Monster’s Ball”). Berry returns to the screen with Kidnap, an action-thriller about a blue-collar mother who does everything she can to get…
