In a shabby trailer park in remote New Mexico, former military sniper Celeste (Adria Arjona), armed to the teeth, struggles with PTSD and an unsteady trigger finger.
Not all of the vintage Looney Tunes are good. Some have aged poorly on a cultural level; others are just repetitive and lacking in edge. But the best of the Looney Tunes are little masterpieces, about as good as American movie comedy has ever gotten.
Both major releases this week are dinosaur-forward, so as usual I'll start with a disclaimer: Any movie with dinosaurs starts at an advantage with me. Take what I say about any dinosaur movie with a grain of salt.
“That is so cool!” So exclaims our hero Peter Parker/Spider-Man at one point in the Marvel movie Spider-Man: Brand New Day. He’s awestruck at a particularly graceful and impressive maneuver by his enemies. It’s professional respect; superhuman prowess acknowledging superhuman prowess. There are quite a few such magical moments in the film, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton from a script by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers. Tom Holland is back as Pete/Spidey, whose existence,...
Exciting as this Odyssey is, however, there’s a sadness to it as well, a sense that we're seeing the end of a Golden Age and the beginning of an era of disillusionment brought about through the brutality of war and the flouting of social and civic norms.
In the late 1970s, a young woman I dated a few times in high school once informed me that, should she ever get the opportunity to sleep with Robby Benson, she was taking it. She wasn’t delusional; she recognized the unlikelihood of this, and wasn’t working to bring it about. But she wanted to make it clear that if circumstances ever happened to align and the chance presented itself, it was happening, and any...
The goggled, giggling little goobers who look like ambulatory yellow Tic Tacs are back in Minions & Monsters.
By the standards of big summer blockbusters, this Supergirl is relatively modest in scope, which I found agreeable.
Played by Hugh Jackman, the title character is presented here as a scoundrel, murderous brigand and varlet.
Disclosure Day is a sci-fi epic in the form of a chase thriller.
The Dracula legend adapts well to zany comedy; the movies Love at First Bite and Dracula: Dead and Loving It are just two examples. But Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors, Arizona Theatre Company’s production playing at Tempe Center for the Arts through June 7, is arguably sillier than either of these, and just as much fun. Directed by Gordon Greenberg from a script by Greenberg and Steve Rosen, DACOT is a furiously paced, intermission-free burlesque of Bram Stoker’s vampire yarn....
Tall and imposingly fleshy, Fraser also manages to give us a human Eisenhower.
After the eye-crossing political backstory of the much-lamented Star Wars prequel and sequel trilogies, it was refreshing.
Lest anyone suppose that the title Is God Is denotes a pious devotional picture, be advised: not so much.
Debuting as a video game in the early ’90s, Mortal Kombat became both popular and notorious for its violent and gory death scenes. This renown led to feature films in 1995 and 1997; onward to TV shows, both animated and live-action; comic books and other incarnations; to a 2021 movie reboot; and now to a sequel, Mortal Kombat II. Not being a video game guy, I was unfamiliar with the franchise when I saw the reboot. Having no...
