Each year brings minor trends in movies, whether it’s a cluster of films with the same actor — like Benedict Cumberbatch in the last months of 2013 — or a series of flicks based on young adult novels. The spring and summer of 2014 may just include a trend of disaster movies. First up is Pompeii, with […]
I first encountered LEGO bricks in the late ‘70s. I was torn between sinking all of my meager savings from chores, birthdays and holidays into LEGO sets or my new Atari 2600, and the video games prevailed. Were it not for a greater addiction to video games, I could have gone down that path of […]
A perpetual daydreamer, longing to break free from his mundane life, jumps at an unexpected opportunity in James Thurber‘s classic tale The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller) is your typical geeky introvert. He goes through each day wondering what life would be like if only he could escape the chains of […]
When I first heard about the planned adaptation of The Hobbit, I thought that the book would translate well into a long, amazing movie. Later on, the project passed through many hands before landing back where it belonged in the lap of director Peter Jackson. In the era of adapting single books into multiple films […]
Hans Christian Andersen‘s classic tale The Snow Queen is reimagined in Frozen, Disney‘s latest animated feature. In the kingdom of Arendelle, there are two young girls — Princess Elsa (voiced by Idina Menzel) and her younger sister, Princess Anna (Kristen Bell). Elsa’s a precocious young girl with a very special secret — she can transform anything into ice and snow. As […]
It’s tough for a filmmaker to get a reaction from people when there’s not a lot going on up on the screen. For some people, deadpan and wistful might translate to unfunny and boring. Nebraska is one of those movies that will divide people into two camps — those who get what it’s all about and those […]
Victors of the previous year’s games find anything but the peace they were promised in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. I need to point out right up front that I never read any of the incredibly successful books behind the films. As such, I can’t really speak to the faithfulness of the story from book […]
An aging father and his newly concerned son reconnect during an impromptu road trip in Nebraska. Director Alexander Payne has been at the helm of three films I absolutely loved: The Descendents, Sideways and Election. He also headed About Schmidt — a solidly regarded Jack Nicholson film that I barely managed to stay awake through. All […]
We’re now in the midst of a glut of movies based on Marvel superheroes and other characters, and there’s no sign of it letting up. For comic book fanboys, this is great; for the rest of moviegoers, it may not be so exciting. I’ll cross my fingers that things don’t decline to the point that there’s […]
A young boy is chosen to be a top military strategist in a battle to save the future of Earth from the onslaught of an alien race in Ender’s Game. Orson Scott Card‘s beloved sci-fi best seller is brought to the big screen for the first time. It’s the story of young Ender Wiggin (Asa […]
A senior yachtsman, sailing solo across an unforgiving ocean, comes face to face with his own mortality when trouble strikes his lonely boat in All Is Lost. Robert Redford plays an unnamed solo seafarer who pilots a 39-foot yacht across the Indian Ocean. He awakens one morning to find the ship damaged by a collision […]
A group of real-life climbers reach the top of K2 only to realize the most difficult part of their journey lies ahead in The Summit. In August of 2008, 18 climbers realized a dream by reaching the summit of one of the deadliest mountains in the world — K2. However, it’s the treacherous descent where most fatalities occur. This […]