Category: GENRE
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Legend [2015] ★★★
A fact based story about the Kray brothers, two of the most notorious criminals in British history, starring Tom Hardy in a double performance sounds like Oscar bait. It isn’t. Yet “Legend” pulls the magician’s trick of distraction, offering enough solid entertainment value—with good use of locations, charismatic actors, and moments of shocking violence—to divert attention from its faults. For some…
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Pay The Ghost [2015] ★
A crappy Halloween movie starring Nicolas Cage is the last thing you needed this season. Cage plays a professor who finds himself hopelessly searching for his missing son who was abducted during a Halloween parade by an ugly entity. The real ugly entity is the movie itself, a terrible horror nonsense with worse special effects. Instead of a review, it…
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Me And Earl And The Dying Girl [2015] ★★★½
This is one of my favorite movies of the year: a coming of age story that turns the familiar into something fresh, funny and poignant. It makes you laugh, then breaks your heart. Thomas Mann plays Greg, a shy teen who is trying to survive high school. One day, his mom “forces” him to visit Rachel (Olivia Cooke,…
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Before We Go [2015] ★½
Ripping off the classic movie “Before Sunrise”, “Before We Go” (look there’s even a “before” in the title!) tells the story of two people (Chris Evans, who also directs, and Alice Eve) who meet in Manhattan one night and end up learning a lot about one another. Unlike “Before Sunrise”, this dull, uninspired film has nothing…
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The Walk [2015] ★★★
“The Walk” is a spectacularly entertaining movie, even if you’ve seen the Oscar winning documentary “Man On Wire”, which in turn was based on Philippe Petit’s book “To Reach The Clouds”. If you did catch that terrific documentary a few years ago, you should be familiar with Petit’s story by now, the man who walked between the…
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The Visit [2015] ★★½
After years of making terrible misfires (“Lady in the Water”, “The Happening”, “After Earth” and oh God “The Last Airbender”), it’s so good to finally see the real M. Night Shyamalan back. Well…kind of. His latest effort, “The Visit”, is far from being an original, but it knows how to creep you out. Combining the…
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Sicario [2015] ★★★½
“Sicario” (which means “Hitman” in spanish) is a cannonball of a movie from director Denis Villeneuve, who did such an incredible job with “Incendies” and “Prisoners“. This is a world-class director, at the top of his startlingly creative form. Working from a tense script by Taylor Sheridan, Villeneuve opens his movie with one of the best sequences you’ll…
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Hotel Transylvania 2 [2015] ★★★
This sequel to the 2012 surprise hit put a smile on my face from start to finish. So what if it comes up short in originality and surprise? It’s still hard to resist. Adam Sandler reprises his role as Count Dracula, who is worried that his half-human, half-vampire grandson, Dennis, isn’t showing signs of being a…
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Pawn Sacrifice [2015] ★★★
A chess movie is probably the last thing you needed right now. Snap out it. This is Toby Maguire like you’ve never seen him before, playing chess master Bobby Fischer, who faced Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky (Liev Schreiber) at the 1972 World Chess Championship in Reykjavík, Iceland. The film, directed by Edward Zwirk with a keen…
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The Intern [2015] ★★★
Nancy Meyers makes adorable movies (yes I’m using the term “adorable” to describe movies now). Her latest movie, “The Intern”, is an agreeable piece of entertainment featuring one of the best actors on the planet, Robert De Niro. If the movie were merely a vehicle for his comedic gifts , that would be enough to…
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The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials [2015] ★★
As someone who liked the first “Maze Runner” movie, I was quite disappointed with this 2nd installment. For one, the element of mystery is gone. There’s also less suspense and tons of new characters. I’m sad to report that I couldn’t care for any of them. It’s too bad. Dylan O’Brian, who did a fine…
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Everest [2015] ★★★
It hurts to watch “Everest”. I have never seen a more powerful story about mountain climbers and I can’t count how many times the movie forced the audience to look away. Director Baltasar Kormakur, his actors and cinematographer outdid themselves to bring this gripping story to the screen, and they have much to be proud of. The reenactment of the…
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The Runner [2015] ★½
Nicolas Cage in yet another paycheck movie, this time as a politician accused of corruption in the aftermath of the BP oil spill in 2010. The result is a boring, confusing mess from start to finish. Pains me to say this but I don’t think we’ll ever see Nic Cage in a decent movie again. Face…
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Black Mass [2015] ★★★½
Maybe you’ve heard the internet buzz about “Black Mass” being Johnny Depp’s comeback movie. Maybe you’ll think so too if you’ve seen “Mortdecai” and/or last year’s horrible “Transcendence“. Despite the gangster theme (Depp has been there before in “Donnie Brasco” and “Public Enemies), “Black Mass” is one terrific movie. The opening scene sets the mood:…
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American Ultra [2015] ★★
I have no faith in myself to speak coherently about this silly farce. But I do have faith in Jesse Einserbeg. Yes, I liked “Zombieland” and “The Social Network” that much and I’m eager for his next, “Batman Vs Superman” with Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill. Ok so here are the facts: Einsenberg goes crazy in “American Ultra”…
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We Are Your Friends [2015] ★½
Like you needed a movie called “We Are Your Friends” to confirm the fact that Zac Efron’s career will never take off. Efron plays Cole, a struggling DJ in California trying to pull it off in the music industry. Writer director Max Joseph bathes this cheesy mess with unnecessary drama. What’s the use? If you can’t figure…
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The Black Cat [1934] ★★★
One of my favorite Bela Lugosi/Boris Karloff horror movies. In the 1930’s, Universal was the ultimate home of horror, and “The Black Cat” finally brought together the studio’s two great horror stars, Boris Karloff aka The Frankenstein monster, and Bela Lugosi aka Count Dracula, for the first of seven films together. The result is a bizarre,…
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Ricki And The Flash [2015] ★★½
Here’s the thing about Meryl Streep: I can watch her in almost anything. And now at 66, she’s still constantly looking for new, challenging roles. “Ricki and the Flash” won’t win her a 4th Oscar, but she’s completely convincing and mesmerizing as an 80’s-style rock-and-roller who performs cover versions of familiar hits with her longtime band at…
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The Transporter Refueled [2015] ★★
Alright folks let’s play a fun game called “Can you tell the Transporters movies apart?”. Probably not. So to make things easier, Hollywood replaced Jason Statham with the much younger Ed Skrein as former special-ops mercenary Frank Martin. His latest mission? Help a femme-fatale and her three partners get revenge against a sinister Russian kingpin. Not an…
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Southpaw [2015] ★★★
You’d think with movies like “Rocky”, “Cinderella Man”, Million Dollar Baby” and “The Fighter”, Hollywood would run out of good boxing stories to tell. Hold on tight. “Southpaw” is a beast of a movie, an emotional roller coaster that threatens to go off the rails, but never does. Director Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day”, “The Equalizer”), working from…
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