Ah, “Cars” movies. They will never soar like Pixar’s finest work, but there is a modesty to them, a pureness of heart that is difficult to deny. “Cars 3” is in many ways a rehash of “Cars,” in which a humbled Lightning McQueen needs to learn a valuable life lesson in order to rise above the setback of the moment. There are a couple of things, though, that elevate “Cars 3” slightly above its predecessors, namely the stunning blend of what appears to be live action photography with cutting-edge CGI (you’ve literally never seen a Disney/Pixar film like this), and…
Author: David Medsker
The idea of Tom Cruise being involved in “The Mummy” seems odd on a number of levels. It doesn’t fit his m.o. at all, which makes one wonder how they were able to lure him in. My theory, based mainly on that new Dark Universe title card, is that Universal wants to reboot their classic horror properties to launch their own MCU, the Monster Cinematic Universe, and they wanted a bonafide star, someone with a higher Q factor than Brendan Fraser had when Universal last rebooted the “Mummy” franchise in 1999, to serve as the anchor. Hmmm… *Googles ‘Universal dark…
Bryan Singer’s name carries quite a bit of clout in Hollywood, this despite the fact that the man’s last good movie turns 10 years old this summer (“X2: X-Men United”). If an actor had that long of a bad streak, they’d be doing dinner theater by now (or, more likely in this day and age, porn). Singer, meanwhile, gets to direct the next “X-Men” movie. Clearly, this man has photos of someone doing something they shouldn’t be doing. “Jack the Giant Slayer,” though, might be the movie that takes Singer down a peg, photos be damned. It’s less of a…
What a misleading title. If anything, Judd Apatow’s latest dramedy “This Is 40” should have been called “Secrets and Lies,” though in fairness no one should be forced to sit through another movie with that title. (Mike Leigh’s film was enough, thank you very much.) For those coming up on the big 4-0, relax: the events in this movie only happen at 40 if you’ve spent the previous few years making terrible, terrible decisions involving your money and your partner. That it’s happening here is less due to age than it is a matter of karmic payback for a complete…
“Jack Reacher” is a pitch-perfect vehicle for Tom Cruise. He gets to kick ass, show off his analytical skills, maintain the moral high ground, and save the girl. (Oh, come on, I’m not really spoiling anything with that last part, am I?) It seems an odd choice, though, for Christopher McQuarrie. He wrote “The Usual Suspects,” a game-changing crime thriller if ever there was one. “Reacher,” on the other hand, seems rather perfunctory for a guy with his leanings. Why did he sign on to write and direct it? Maybe it was the chance to work with Cruise, and the…
“Zero Dark Thirty” can’t win for losing. In making a film about the hunt for 9/11 mastermind and financier Osama bin Laden, director Kathryn Bigelow tries to keep it as real as possible, but the truth lets her down at times. Anyone who’s read Mark Bowden’s piece in Vanity Fair about the raid on bin Laden’s compound knows that the raid itself was more hammer vs. nail than good vs. evil. When the big moment finally arrives at the end of Bigelow’s 157-minute film (!), it’s kind of like watching a horror movie from the killer’s perspective; the Navy SEAL…
Putting “The Twlight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part Two” into perspective is tricky. On its own, it shares many of the same unflattering qualities that undid every other “Twilight” movie – worse, it doesn’t feature Anna Kendrick, the series’ sole saving grace – but compared to its predecessor, “Breaking Dawn, Part One,” it’s a vast improvement. It’s still not very good, though; indeed, the series as a whole has steadily lowered the level of expectations to the point where ‘less bad’ has become ‘good,’ which is surely what Bill Hicks meant when he warned that pop culture icons were in fact…
Think of “Flight” as Michael Crichton’s book “Airframe” crossed with the Michael Keaton movie “Clean and Sober,” with some talk about God awkwardly sprinkled throughout. The TV ads are pushing the “Airframe” portion of the story, but really, this is a movie about alcoholism, with an unusually large budget. John Gatins’ script certainly has good intentions, but as we all know, that is what they used to pave the road to hell. Captain Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) is a commercial pilot, and during a short flight from Orlando to Atlanta, he encounters some severe turbulence. His unconventional methods to avoiding…
Movies like “Wreck-It Ralph” make me realize just how arbitrary star ratings for movies can be. No one over the age of 10 is going to think this is on the same level as “Argo” or some other piece of Oscar bait, but at the same time, “Ralph” is smart, sweet, wildly inventive, just a little bit naughty, and a ton of fun to watch. It’s far better than “Hotel Transylvania,” so it seemed right to give it at least an extra star. So there it is, with the same rating that I gave “127 Hours.” Maybe I got “Hotel”…
Paramount used to pony up big bucks for the movie rights to James Patterson novels. This time around, Patterson’s “Alex Cross,” named after his titular detecto-shrink, fell to Summit Entertainment, and while Summit is raking in headlines and cash at the moment with those “Twilight” movies, make no mistake: for James Patterson, this is a precipitous drop. Look at the script, though, and it makes sense why every other major studio passed: it’s a flat recycling of every late-‘90s thriller ever made, without an original thought in its head. Worse, it just looks cheap, and cheap combined with unoriginal is…