Adventure

[6] A big-budget studio action-comedy is one of the least likely candidates to catch my attention these days, but a few people insisted Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was a cut above the rest. And while the bar is low, they were right. The movie centers around four teenagers sentenced to clean out a school basement during detention. While there, they find a video game …

[6] Elisabeth Shue (Leaving Las Vegas, The Karate Kid) stars as a high school senior who resigns herself to babysitting when her date cancels at the last minute. But when her friend runs away from home and makes a panicked call from the bus terminal in downtown Chicago, Shue decides she has to rescue her — even if it means dragging a 9 year-old girl …

[6] Dustin Hoffman and Renee Russo star as an estranged married couple both working government jobs in the area of infectious disease control. When a fast-acting deadly virus begins spreading in America, the two find themselves working together to control the spread and locate the source of the outbreak — an African monkey let loose in suburban California. The screenwriters weave in a layer of …

[4] Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn star as a mother and daughter who get kidnapped while on vacation in Ecuador. While they try to find their way to the safety of the American consulate in Bogota, they reconcile many years of estrangement. The situation itself isn’t funny, but the reactions from Schumer and Hawn are supposed to be. I love both these ladies, but they …

[7] It’s best to go into The Rise of Skywalker knowing that this third Star Wars trilogy has never had a strong guiding hand. It’s not the result of a carefully premeditated creative effort. Creator George Lucas was not there watching over everything for these three films — and for good and for bad, it shows. Episode 9 is the result of a studio panicking …

[7] The impending apocalypse of Terminator and Terminator 2 Judgment Day was averted, but you can’t stop technological ‘progress’. Enter Terminator: Dark Fate, a direct sequel to the second film (ignoring two or three films in-between) that sets up a new cataclysmic countdown to doomsday, a new victim that needs saving, and a new savior sent from the future to protect tomorrow’s inspirational resistance leader. …

[6] Writer/director James Gray (The Lost City of Z) sends Brad Pitt into space in this film that takes place in the not-too-distant future. Pitt’s mission is discover if his long-lost father (Tommy Lee Jones) is the culprit behind attacks from Neptune that threaten human life on Earth, the moon, and Mars. You can think of it as a journey into Apocalypse Now‘s ‘heart of …

[7] Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive, Only God Forgives) serves up this meditative drama about a mute, one-eyed, pagan strong man (Hannibal‘s Mads Mikkelsen) who fights for the entertainment of his Norse captors way back around the year 1000 AD. He finally escapes and brings a young boy along with him. The two soon take up company with a small band of Crusaders looking for their …

[6] When it was William Shatner’s turn to spearhead a Star Trek movie, he wanted it to be about a search for God in which God turned out to be the Devil. The studio let him have his way, and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier ended up under-performing during the crowded summer of 1989 (when Batman and Indiana Jones slayed at the box office). …

[8] After dealing with the death and resurrection of Spock in the previous two films, director Leonard Nimoy was given free reign with the fourth entry in the Star Trek franchise. Nimoy decided it was time for the series to take a breather — to show its lighter side and let the characters shine. With a script co-written by Nicholas Meyer (Star Trek II: The …

1 3 4 5 6 7 19