Posted March 09, 2016in Film Review
“Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” is a film based on Kim Barker’s bitingly funny memoir, “The Taliban Shuffle,” depicting her time as the Chicago Tribune’s South Asian bureau chief, a position she held for nearly five years. The book is insightful, witty, wonderfully self-aware and full of the gallows humor that people
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Posted March 02, 2016in Film Review
Disney has done consistently well when it comes to its live-action films and adaptations of feel-good true stories — sports stories in particular. These films are not always Oscar-worthy entries, nor are they guaranteed to necessarily stay exactly true to their source material, but they have just enough truth to
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Posted February 24, 2016in Film Review
Religious films are surprisingly difficult to pull off. For starters, centering a film on a religious story will most likely turn off a segment of the secular audience. Aside from that, budgets for religious films have been steadily shrinking over the years as the major studios have turned to more
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Posted February 17, 2016in Film Review
After six years of development hell, a small team of dedicated movie folk, led by director Tim Miller, has finally succeeded in bringing the least film-friendly mainstream comic book hero to the big screen. Deadpool, for those of you less versed in the comic book world, is your classic anti-hero.
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Posted February 10, 2016in Film Review
We often expect too much of the Coen bothers because we know they are capable of greatness. In the pantheon of their films — there have been 17 in all — most agree that some combination of “Fargo,” “No Country For Old Men,” “Raising Arizona,” “O Brother Where Art Thou,”
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Posted February 03, 2016in Film Review
Walking into “The Finest Hours,” I was ready for the film to be good. I wanted it to be good. On paper, there was absolutely no reason why it should not be good. Chris Pine is a perfectly serviceable, generally charismatic lead. Casey Affleck is an underrated talent and great
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Posted January 27, 2016in Film Review
“The 5th Wave” is the next film in the “teenagers save the world” films based on young adult books. Since the Rick Yancey book the film is based on is part of a series, the film is almost certain to be the first installment of a series, most likely a
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Posted January 20, 2016in Film Review
Once upon a time, back in the halcyon, pre-9/11 days of 2000, Michael Bay filmed a movie called “Pearl Harbor.” Released in spring of the following year, “Pearl Harbor” was an objectively terrible film, where Bay supremely exposed himself as a one-note action director with a tone-deaf approach to anything
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Posted January 13, 2016in Film Review
It did not take long at all for 2016 to deliver its first unforgettable film. “The Revenant” follows the true-life story of explorer Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), who is mauled by a bear during a fur trapping expedition, left for dead by his fellow trappers and subsequently crawls 100 miles
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Posted January 06, 2016in Film Review
A funny thing has happened to Quentin Tarantino over the years. He used to be the poster boy for the indie auteur. Films like “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction” were great because of their daring and unconventionality. But those films were so good — and Miramax was so good at
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