Paramount Pictures

I’m gonna be straight up here: I like watching Nancy Meyers’ What Women Want from time to time. A pre-meltdown Mel Gibson and an absolutely delightful Helen Hunt aided and abetted by a supporting cast which includes the likes of Ashley Johnson, Alan Alda, Judy Greer, and Bette Midler? What couldn’t you like about it? […]

SPOILER ALERT: While I do not discuss the ending, I will highlight something which happens in the pre-title sequence. It’s an event which drives the rest of the film; discussing it, though, ruins the intended shock. This paragraph will be marked accordingly. A Quiet Place hits on so many different levels, it’s hard to know […]

(Foreword: I went in without watching any trailers or reading any press. My recommendation: let the film have its way with you first – because that’s what it will do – then read my reaction below. What I have written will undoubtedly color your experience, and I’m running this without so much as a picture […]

2017’s Rings is to 2002’s The Ring as a Smashburger is to a steak from Peter Luger’s in New York City. The absolute horror of the tightly-wound, dread-filled 2002 US remake of a 1998 Japanese horror film has been squeezed out of it, presenting only a crude imitation of the original with zero flavor or […]

Never has the term “thinking man’s science-fiction film” been more accurate than when describing Denis Villeneuve’s latest directorial effort, Arrival. Working from a thoughtful, complex screenplay written by Eric Heisserer – whom I dismissed as a screenwriter capable only of writing middling films based upon other sources in my review of Lights Out – Villeneuve […]

There’s a reason why a character like Jack Reacher – either in the films or in Lee Childs’ novels – speaks to us. Here’s a man who’s free from all obligations, a former member of the Army Military Police Corps who wants to see the country he spent so much time defending, wanting to be […]