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The X-Men Movies Ranked!
Superhero movies are all the rage these days, with endless sequels, spinoffs and team-ups hitting the screen seemingly every month. An argument can be made that the comic-book movie craze can be traced back to 2000 when director Bryan Singer’s X-Men became a box-office smash, raking in just under $300 million worldwide. There were huge, blockbuster comic book movies before that, but it became appa...[Read More]
Box Office Weekend: Kung Fu Panda 3 Holds Against a Conquering Caesar
While many may have skipped the theater on Sunday to catch the Super Bowl (as evidenced by the lowest box office earning weekend of the year), there is still a handful of debuts that tried their best to catch an audience. Critics are finding mostly good things to say about the latest Coen Brothers film, Hail, Caesar!, and though it did middling against its $22 million budget by opening in second p...[Read More]
Movie Review: Hail, Caesar!
The Coen brothers first started publicly discussing their idea for Hail, Caesar! over a decade ago, but the resulting film feels jauntily tossed together in a fraction of that time. In some ways that’s a good thing. The film has a loose comic energy that allows it to slip easily from lengthy sketches to plottier sequences. But it’s also lacking in coherence. The Coens seem unsure if they’re making...[Read More]
The Secret Life of Pets Debuts New Trailer and Poster
For their fifth fully animated feature-film collaboration, Illumination Entertainment and Universal Pictures present The Secret Life of Pets, a comedy about the lives our pets lead after we leave for work or school each day. The studios released the film’s new poster (see below) and trailer (see above) recently. Comedy superstars Louis C.K., Eric Stonestreet, and Kevin Hart make their animated fea...[Read More]
Movie Review: Mustang
Turkish-born French filmmaker Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s feature film debut Mustang is extremely impressive in its ability to portray, in extreme beauty, the allegorical atrociousness of life for five young sisters in rural Turkey. Lale (Güneş Şensoy), Nur (Doğa Doğuşlu), Ece (Elit İşcan), Selma (Tuğba Sunguroğlu), and Sonay (İlayda Akdoğan) are five sisters who, as the film opens, are perfectly conten...[Read More]
DreamWorks Releases First Trailer for Trolls
DreamWorks Animation and 20th Century Fox have released the first trailer for Trolls! From the creators of Shrek comes the most smart, funny, irreverent animated comedy of the year, DreamWorks’ Trolls. This holiday season, enter a colorful, wondrous world populated by hilariously unforgettable characters and discover the story of the overly optimistic Trolls, with a constant song on their lips, an...[Read More]
Box Office Weekend: Family-Friendly Kung Fu Panda 3 Takes Weekend
There was no battle, no contest, nor were a flurry of blows necessary as Kung Fu Panda 3 took the weekend box office with no real competition with an estimated $41 million. Though the weakest start for the franchise domestically, the latest entry looks set to rake it in big in overseas dollars, as have the previous films, already bringing in $116.7 million in worldwide gross. The Revenant, too, is...[Read More]
Trailer Trashin’: DC’s Villains Go to War in the Suicide Squad First Official Trailer
We’ve reached the end of January, dear readers, and we’ll soon find out if that groundhog in Pennsylvania will curse us with six more weeks of winter. But while we wait for warmer weather, there are always new movies for us to look forward to. This week’s column takes a look at the first official trailer for Suicide Squad. Premise: The secret government agency A.R.G.U.S., run by Amanda Waller (Vio...[Read More]
A Kid Film Critic Reviews Kung Fu Panda 3
Kung Fu Panda 3 was a good movie. This movie is about a panda named Po who was raised by a noodle-making duck. When his long-lost father appears and wants to get to know Po – Po tries to learn more about his panda culture and act more panda-like. When Kai, who is trying to destroy all the Kung Fu masters, arrives Po has to do the impossible to save the world. Will Po be able to defeat the almighty...[Read More]
Movie Review: The Finest Hours
February of 1952 brought about an epic winter storm off the coast of Cape Cod, the Coast Guard made one of history’s bravest attempts at rescuing a split in half oil tanker (one of two ships demolished that evening). The new film, The Finest Hours is the account of those events. I had very high hopes for this film, based on true events. The Finest Hours having a wonderful cast, Chris Pine plays le...[Read More]
Movie Review: 45 Years
45 Years is tenacious, presenting a soft, blistering meditation on the genuine love story. The film effortlessly proves that tenderness and compatibility make a love-filled marriage, but the magic of 45 Years is its careful study of what uproots the surefootedness of that love. How slight that ripple starts out, even when a marriage seems unshakable, is the heartbreak of the film. More to the poin...[Read More]
Movie Review: The Luft Gangster: Memoirs of a Second Class Hero
We give all this praise to war veterans and current members of the military, as we rightfully should, but we seem to forget about other parts of our military. We don’t seem to talk about African Americans or women in the service, or even a little thing like all the medical workers taking care of all of our service members oversees. The new documentary, The Luft Gangster: Memoirs of Second Cl...[Read More]