British spy 007 breaks ranks to follow a clue leading him into his own past in the poorly-conceived Spectre. Daniel Craig returns for his fourth appearance as Britain’s top secret agent, James Bond. This time around, he’s on a personal mission to expose a sinister organization, Spectre, run by a shadowy figure named Franz Oberhauser […]
A SWAT team agent joins a covert government assignment to take down a daunting drug lord in the painfully slow Sicario. Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) is a proud, practiced FBI agent. She represents everything that’s good about law enforcement; she’s dedicated to its principles and excels at delivering tangible results. When the stakes get raised, […]
Movie critics often compare films to roller coasters. There are highs and lows as well as exciting parts and quiet moments. I’ve done it myself. Sometimes, that’s exactly what the experience in the theater feels like. Imagine if a ride took off and stayed at an intense speed for the duration. They exist. These speed-focused […]
A reclusive corporate tycoon is on the hunt for a genetically engineered super soldier in the erratic video game adaptation Hitman: Agent 47. The characters and concept behind this film come from a popular 15-year-old video game series. The success of such films often pales in comparison to the success of the games on which they’re based. […]
You’ve heard before that you should never judge a book by its cover. I just learned this week that I should also never judge a stoner by his long hair and flannel. I wasn’t sure what to expect with American Ultra. I only knew that it was about a guy who was lazily coasting through […]
An unlikely team of international spies join forces to keep a shadowy criminal organization from acquiring a nuclear bomb in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. James Bond burst onto the big screen for the first time in 1962 with the release of Dr. No. Its success created a frenzy of new films and shows eager to […]
Some superhero movies in the ‘80s and ‘90s were really bad. The Punisher is my favorite comic book character, and 1989’s The Punisher tanked because it was both a bad movie and a bad adaptation of the comic. The quality of the films with Marvel characters really ramped up with Iron Man and carried forward […]
Love him or hate him for any reason, Tom Cruise remains an international movie star and box office draw. Some movie companies stake their budgets on these facts, and it doesn’t always work out. Over the past two decades, the Mission: Impossible franchise has featured some of Cruise’s best work in that time period. Characterized […]
I am from the generation that begged my parents for quarters so that I could run off to the arcade when we went shopping at the mall. Even now, I am still in the habit of paying for items with certain combinations of coins and bills in order to get back quarters. My older brother […]
In a summer that already debuted Avengers: Age of Ultron, we didn’t really need more superhero movies. If you look over the upcoming schedule of Marvel films, they are almost all designed and scheduled to be blockbusters. Imagine my surprise when I saw Ant-Man on a similar list a couple of years ago. Ant-Man?! I […]
It’s tough to think of Arnold Schwarzenegger and not immediately recall such classic lines as “I’ll be back” or “Hasta la vista, baby.” These two are from The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day respectively. Although there are lots of other things going on in both films, including buff badass Linda Hamilton, Schwarzenegger is the […]
Certain movie scenes stick with you forever. Some are iconic for everyone like the finales of Casablanca or Gone with the Wind, and others are more personal. One of those scenes for me is the T. rex attack on the jeep in Jurassic Park. I remember seeing it the first time in a packed theater. […]