Paramount Pictures

Hearing early word about a supposedly “great” film tends to color one’s perceptions of what they wind up seeing. Frances Ha and Mad Max: Fury Road are two examples for me where hyperbolic statements led to heightened expectations, which in turn led to disappointment. In the case of Anomalisa, said hyperbole actually works to the […]

Leading up to the financial meltdown of 2008, this new econo-medy treats the then-imminent crisis like a tsunami about to make landfall,  and only a handful of people are standing on the beach to see the water receding from the shore. It didn’t happen overnight, though it sure felt like that to most of us. Suddenly, stock portfolios shriveled […]

Good evening, Mr. Hunt. 36 hours ago, there was a breach in our military’s communication network. Now, an emerging terror organization known as The Syndicate has control over our entire drone fleet. Their targets: Unknown. Your mission, should you choose to accept it… — the closing “tape scene” of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol With those words, Impossible Mission Force (IMF) Agent […]

“Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” has more than  its share of clever ideas and death-defying stunts. Even before the opening credits, star Tom Cruise, consistently narrowing the divide between himself and the super spy that he’s portraying, clings to the side of a cargo plane as it makes a rather abrupt ascent from takeoff. Ethan […]

“Terminator Genisys” follows an alternate timeline in which an aging terminator called “Pops” (Arnold Schwarzenegger) tries to smile a lot, and the primary villain is the iconic resistance leader John Connor (Jason Clarke) who has been retooled by the machines as some sort of unstoppable human/robot hybrid to go back in time and — well, make […]

“I don’t know why I’m remembering a life I never lived, but I know that it’s real.” With those words, Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) sums up and tries to excuse Terminator Genisys and the problematic mess that it is. No matter if James Cameron, writer and director of the seminal 1984 film that started a […]