
The Best and Worst Movies of 2015
Because I am lucky enough to live in the sticks of North Carolina, unlike my Los Angeles days, I don’t see everything because most of the smaller Oscar-bait movies fail — with good reason — to make their way out

Because I am lucky enough to live in the sticks of North Carolina, unlike my Los Angeles days, I don’t see everything because most of the smaller Oscar-bait movies fail — with good reason — to make their way out

Disney has done an amazing job keeping the plot under wraps. This review will honor that. The strokes will be broad. Biases upfront. I am no “Star Wars” fanboy. The original trilogy is terrific, at least until the Ewoks show

Director Ron Howard certainly knows where to place a camera. Naturally, most of the Big Scenes involving the killer whale are cartoonish CGI, but you cannot argue with the beauty of the composition. The problem is the story. Believe it

This review is unforgivably late because I’m a bit of an agoraphobic. Showing the kind of maturity and self-confidence we don’t see too often in Hollywood, or anyplace else these days, even after his 2006 triumph “Rocky Balboa,” Sylvester Stallone

Throughout much of your holiday tomorrow, the National Geographic Channel is running its two-part, four hour miniseries “Saints and Strangers,” a gritty docudrama that claims to tell the “real story” of the first Thanksgiving. After seeing the first two hours,

Other than his early, simpler genre entries like 1997’s “Mimic” and 2002’s “Blade II,” director Guillermo del Toto leaves me cold. As good as his films always manage to look, there is always something missing. On many levels, del Toro’s

For the last couple of years, and for no particular reason, I have been studying the former Soviet Union: the Bolshevik Revolution, the Stalin era, the Gulags and Terror Campaigns. This has resulted in a growing frustration over Hollywood’s refusal

Confession: The 2011 film Limitless, starring Bradley Cooper and Robert DeNiro, is one of my favorite films of the last 5 years. In fact, I became a little obsessed with it to the point that I bought the script to see how it differed from the finished film.

Director Baltasar Kormákur’s docudrama is competently produced and tense enough to hold your interest, but so is a forced death march, which is what the “Everest” experience feels like at the end. The story is a true one. The year

“Apollo 13″ meets “Interstellar” in director Ridley Scott’s “The Martian,” and the result is a blockbuster piece of entertainment that matches both. Matt Damon has never been more likable as Mark Watney, an American astronaut and botanist who, in a

Watching the most recent presidential debates might have given Emily Blunt second thoughts about becoming an American citizen, but her latest movie, “Sicario,” a compelling, disturbing, and harrowing story about the Drug War set along our southern border, plays like

“Furious 7,” the latest chapter in the blockbuster “Fast & Furious” franchise, is now available on Bluray, and I’m here to tell you that the third time is the charm. After seeing the latest adventures of Don, Letty, Brian, Mia

Johnny Depp is back in form as notorious Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger in director Scott Cooper’s “Black Mass.” The meat of the story is absurdly promising, primarily because it’s true. Thanks primarily to the F.B.I. looking the other way,

The opening sequence of director Guy Ritchie’s “Man from U.N.C.L.E.” is promising — a clever, action-filled chase through East Berlin as American agent Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) attempts to get his cool and quippy self and Alicia Vikander (Gaby Teller)

Before the movie begins, over the opening Universal Pictures logo, director F. Gary Gray’s “Straight Outta Compton” opens with the sound that came to define South Central Los Angeles in the late 80’s and early 90’s — the sound of

The best thing about “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” is that we now have final confirmation that Academy Award-winner Mel Gibson has been blackballed by Hollywood, not for the vile statements he made about Jews, but for producing “The Passion

Rusty Griswold is all growed up. Oddly enough, though, he’s no longer the cool, self-assured Anthony Michael Hall we met in 1983. He is now Ed Helms, a sweet-natured bumbler just like his dad Clark, the iconic character portrayed by

The first trailer for Michael Bay’s movie 13 Hours, based on a first-person account of the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, was released Tuesday. Many sites—including Breitbart News—posted the trailer, but Vox went well beyond that, offering a 1,500-word review of the two-minute clip.

From my count, “Ant-Man” is now the 12th entry in the ongoing Marvel Universe franchise that began with 2008’s “Iron Man,” and after the pounding CGI-fury that was “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” the story of the biggest little hero in

Like every overrated Judd Apatow comedy, “Trainwreck” is overlong, uneven, indulgent, loaded with countless unnecessary scenes, and filled with sleazy sexual situations so uncomfortable you just want them to end. There are also a few hearty laughs mixed with real

The best news is that after being pummeled for more than two hours by young, shirtless hunks with hairless chests and chiseled abs, I can report that my heterosexuality remains firmly intact. Nothing moved. Nothing wanted to move. As someone

Since the childhood wish of his best friend John (Mark Wahlberg) brought him to glorious life decades ago, Ted (a three-foot tall stuffed teddy bear voiced by Seth MacFarlane) has gone about the business of living the life of a

The ignorance of the political left never fails to amaze. By complaining about the supposed “sexism” of Jurassic World, joyless feminists everywhere — from Avengers director Joss Whedon to the left-wing The Daily Beast — only prove that they failed

In a movie-world before superheroes and comic books and franchises and universes, Concept was King, and in 1990 author Michael Crichton came up with a doozy. Imagine, Crichton fantasized, that a mosquito drew blood from a dinosaur and then got

“The Further” is a place where the tortured souls of the dead wait for an opportunity to return to our world. This makes for some spooky stuff: Hauntings. Possessions. Exorcisms. Trips to The Further to retrieve endangered loved ones. This