Like every overrated Judd Apatow comedy, “Trainwreck” is overlong, uneven, indulgent, loaded with countless unnecessary scenes, and filled with sleazy sexual situations so uncomfortable you just want them to end. There are also a few hearty laughs mixed with real
The best news is that after being pummeled for more than two hours by young, shirtless hunks with hairless chests and chiseled abs, I can report that my heterosexuality remains firmly intact. Nothing moved. Nothing wanted to move. As someone
Since the childhood wish of his best friend John (Mark Wahlberg) brought him to glorious life decades ago, Ted (a three-foot tall stuffed teddy bear voiced by Seth MacFarlane) has gone about the business of living the life of a
The ignorance of the political left never fails to amaze. By complaining about the supposed “sexism” of Jurassic World, joyless feminists everywhere — from Avengers director Joss Whedon to the left-wing The Daily Beast — only prove that they failed
In a movie-world before superheroes and comic books and franchises and universes, Concept was King, and in 1990 author Michael Crichton came up with a doozy. Imagine, Crichton fantasized, that a mosquito drew blood from a dinosaur and then got
“The Further” is a place where the tortured souls of the dead wait for an opportunity to return to our world. This makes for some spooky stuff: Hauntings. Possessions. Exorcisms. Trips to The Further to retrieve endangered loved ones. This
Rising comedic superstar Melissa McCarthy is the main attraction in “Spy,” a hit-and-miss comedy that entertains even as it treads where dozens of James Bond spoofs have gone before. In a nice change of pace, McCarthy lays her aggressive, foul
The premiere of “Entourage” on HBO in the summer of 2004 arrived just a few months after my own arrival in Hollywood. My goals were much less ambitious than Vinnie and the gang, and I wouldn’t even achieve those, but
This review is late because I was on vacation. Every prediction made by the Global Cooling Global Warming Climate Change hoaxers has proven to be a hoax. The planet is not warming. Hurricanes have not gotten worse. The Arctic ice
For three decades, writer/director Cameron Crowe has been waging a one-auteur war against cynicism. God bless him, this is a filmmaker who believes in sincerity, the healing power of rock ‘n’ roll, true love, redemption, and the ultimate triumph of
It kind of takes your breath away to look back on just how much the world has changed since director Michael Wadleigh’s procedural-horror film “Wolfen” arrived in the summer of 1981. There was no streaming, no home computers, no mainstream
Interestingly enough, the biggest problem with the tender, old-fashioned, and surprisingly engaging “Age of Adaline” is not a preposterous concept. The idea of a woman who stopped aging at age 29 some 75 years ago is handled quite beautifully. What
“Unfriended” takes place in real time over 82 minutes, and all of that time is filled using one continuous shot. The camera never moves. There is not a single edit. I’ve read this was all done with a budget of
Six years after 2009’s “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” shocked everyone by grossing $146 million, star and co-writer Kevin James returns as the bumbling title character in a tired sequel that has fewer laughs than most horror films. Bless his heart,
Pop culture matters … a lot. In fact, pop culture is everything. Movies, of course, are the ultimate in pop culture — a combination of almost every known art form turned into a powerful fury of sound and image that
One of the four-thousand trailers that ran prior to my “Furious 7” screening Thursday night was for the upcoming James Bond entry “Spectre.” And what a bummer those 96 seconds are. In Daniel Craig’s fourth go-round, the world is still
Will Ferrell has never been my cup of tea. This has nothing to do with his noxious left-wing politics. It’s that his screen presence is one of the most unlikable I’ve ever come across. Vulgarity for the sake of vulgarity,
Walt Disney’s live-action Cinderella is everything fans of the beloved fairy tale want and more. It’s magical, colorful, beautiful, exciting, and leaves the audience with an encouraging and important message of kindness and courage.
Last night’s reaction to “Fifty Shades of Grey” from the female, college-aged crowd I sat through this preordained S&M blockbuster with, makes for a better review than anything a middle-aged male fuddy-duddy like myself could conjure. This particular packed house loved the first 40 minutes (which are pretty good). They giggled and “hell yessss’d” the wish fulfillment that comes with a “Pretty Woman-style romance that sees a mousey nobody whisked into the fairytale world of the super rich by an impossibly-handsome Prince Charming.
It is obvious director Matthew Vaughn’s “Kingsman: The Secret Service” is going to be different when things open with a flashback involving the necessarily rough interrogation of a barbaric Islamic terrorist. The scene sets the rest of the plot in
Perhaps I’m placing too much topical significance on one barely-noticed movie, but the new fantasy film “Seventh Son” is an example of everything that’s wrong with bloated, out-of-control Hollywood. It’s not offensively horrible or anything – if you like swordfights,
