There’s a lot to like about the rotten heroes of Suicide Squad

What happens when you go to the tightest jail to collect a handful of the baddest people — that last word used loosely, for this is the comic book world, after all — to save the world? A divide between critics who pan the movie and diehard fans who rally behind Suicide Squad, it turns…

As a sexy superhero movie, Deadpool wins on both accounts

The Marvel Universe wins me over more and more each movie I see. With the timing (and expense) of one-a-week in the big-screen theaters, I didn’t get to join in on the Deadpool hysteria. I pulled it out of the Orange MediaBank machine with my card at the Liverpool Public Library – where you don’t…

Matt Damon is Jason Bourne again, so people must die

To say that things get heavy when old connection Nicky hunts down former operative Jason Bourne on the streets of Greece to let him know that she’s hacked into the agency’s files to find the secrets about his past he’s been longing to discover doesn’t quite put the reunion of main man Matt Damon and…

Latest Star Trek feels a lot like TV days, and that’s OK

Would Justin Lin make my favorite Star Trek crew members faster or more furious? Yes, but it may take a while. And, well, maybe a little. And in the case of Star Trek Beyond, the work of the director of the Fast and Furiousfranchise turned out to be a pretty nice touch for James T.…

New Ghostbusters won’t let you forget the original

Will this new Ghostbusters stand on its own? With the small-print tag line Answer the Call added to the famous sequel to the 1984 comedy blockbuster, that’s even more of a natural question. Could it? Some originals become so ingrained on a culture’s psyche over time that a sequel stands little chance. And No. 1,…

All we need is more rockers like Tom Petty runnin’ down their dreams

Every time I hear somebody utter the hated phrase Rock is dead, I shake my head, sometimes my fist, and say, sometimes to myself and sometimes out loud, Not in my house. Not in my heart. So when my music-loving sis Sandra Bialdez from the forever-adored West Coast blog Square One Notes (not her real…

New version of Tarzan doesn’t want to swing through his Legend

In this version of Tarzan, we meet the man of the jungle as an aristocrat in jolly old England, happily married to Jane under the given name of the parents from which he was orphaned before those sympathetic apes raised him. And when a U.S. politico played by Samuel L. Jackson comes with the proposal…

I don’t care as much about the big, bad space ship testing our Independence Day again

The powers-that-be waited 20 years to take another swing at the big spaceship and battle to save our planet that was super-hit Independence Day. Hey, in two decades, movie technology has come so far. Director Roland Emmerich had four others take part in shaping his script, Dean Devlin, Nicolas Wright, James Vanderbilt and James A.…

The food, drink, service and comfort at Movie Tavern are just right

Dinner and a movie. The two go together, forever and ever. Past, present and future. In the Wayback Machine, I recall going to a joint down in Florida to see a Clint Eastwood flick and eat a pizza simultaneously with my Tampa-area friend Deana. But that was a flat-floored experience in the 1980s, in a…

The Rock shows Hart and smarts in Central Intelligence

The main guys in Central Intelligence sure were different 20 years ago, we see in the flashback that sets up the action comedy starring Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart. The Rock as Robbie Weirdicht was the picked-upon high school doughboy dancing in the locker room shower until the Mean Boys pulled him out and slid…