Chess changes circumstances. So can cross country, horse racing, baseball, football or any sport under the sun—leave it to Disney’s “Inspiring True Story” department to fashion it into a life-changing factor. There is a pattern across all productions as well: competent acting, fair visual flourishes and a...
You can now check “watching birds on caffeine” off your bucket list. I might have missed a scene where someone in Warner Animation Group’s sophomore effort consumes coffee, but maybe the drink was already drawn into them. Junior (Andy Samberg) is always mobile, delivering packages like a champ and is well on his way to...
Superman, you may now retire. That wasn’t hyperbole, by the way. Tom Hanks, alone, saved his crew from armed pirates in the Indian Ocean, swiftly conducted a high-profile prisoner exchange on Glienicke Bridge and, most recently, got all 155 souls accounted for after landing an Airbus A320 on the Hudson. Despite the...
TFW potentially thoughtful science aims for the kiddie pool. After many years and two failed attempts, researchers of synSECT Systems have made Morgan (Anya Taylor-Joy), a fully synthetic human that can express feelings. She is almost everything they designed — “almost” because they can’t seem to keep her violence in...
“A mother’s love resembles the vast Pacific,” described a line in Vietnam’s most-famous ode to maternity. There’s an extraordinary ocean in Isabel Graysmark (Alicia Vikander)’s eyes. Its currents have power to cure the other parent, lighthouse keeper Tom Sherbourne (Michael Fassbender), from the horrors of World War...
Here’s to hoping a travel-size oxygen tank is within a college student’s budget. In the revamped “Evil Dead,” director Fede Álvarez wanted to use all the chaos spewing on-screen to drive up the demand for Ibuprofen. The Uruguayan filmmaker continues to play doctor—the respiratory kind, in particular—for the audiences in...
Blink now while the previews are still playing—allow nothing to distract your attention from what is possibly the next Oscar winner for Best Animated Feature. It might be a bit early for the champagne since the 89th Academy Awards is still six months away, but Laika’s latest film contains acclaim in every frame. Other...
Game developer Square Enix’s latest filmmaking attempt misses full potential again. But, again, the effort they have invested to get there is most admirable. Like 2001’s “The Spirits Within” and 2005’s “Advent Children,” the film pushes the boundaries of how stories can be told across media forms and, especially,...
For his entrance into a kitchen full of people, Jared Leto’s Joker opens the scene saying, “blah, blah, blah.” Not exactly the right way to start a conversation, but that is the quintessential Mr. J. Also not right, and much less forgiving, is the film’s opening. There’s little logic in introducing characters A and B,...
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