Couple-up or it’s a mighty curious or-else in the wonderful The Lobster

Remember all that talk about your spirit animal a bit back? Well, Yorgos Lanthimos beats that animal kingdom by then-some in The Lobster, the writer and director’s first English-speaking film of his Film-Fest darling career. It’s a thoughtful satire on our society’s rush to pick somebody — anybody, really — to declare as The One.…

Me Before You Carries Much More than Romance to the Table

Love stories should come in all shapes and sizes. I’m glad when we get one that dares to stray from the oh-so-popular, inspired-by Nicholas Sparks and The Notebook formula, trickling down for 20 years now. Me Before You brings its share of stereotypes, yes. Scripted by Jojo Moyes from her own novel of the same name…

Taking a holiday from the movies

I took the three-day Memorial Day Weekend with my dear wife Karen seriously. I didn’t go to any of the Regal Cinemas around Syracuse to write our regular Monday movie review. Not Destiny USA. Not Shoppingtown. Not Great Northern. Not even the artsy Manlius Cinema. True confession: I didn’t feel like a movie by myself…

The Nice Guys are and they aren’t, but they’re always interesting

It’s 1977 in Los Angeles, and folks are having a fine time dancing their way through the smog, sort of, until a car carrying porno star Misty Mountains crashes down from the hills through the living room of a wide-eyed but somehow still respectful young teen. Thus start the mysteries of The Nice Guys, a…

With George Clooney, Julia Roberts hitting Jodie Foster’s marks, it’s easy to believe Money Monster

In true life on a slow day, one might hover over a cable network show such as Money Monster for a couple of minutes for sheer shock value. In the movie by that name, producer Patty Fenn seems fully aware of this notion. So the veteran show-maker allows host Lee Gates to ham it up…

Captain America: Civil War takes them from Avenging friends to astonishing rivals to probing film

Life’s tough when you’re an Avenger. The latest in the line of blockbusters from the Marvel Universe starts with more terrible turmoil for the gang of heroes who collect to save the world from bad stuff concocted by badder people. Then it gets worse. Yes, Scarlet Witch’s last-second mind-wave saves Captain America’s bacon. But it…

I love some more Richard Linklater coming-of-age brilliance!!

The buzzed kids in Dazed in Confused did end up going to college. Metaphorically, in the mind of terrific writer and director Richard Linklater, it turns out. And so a quick 23 years after that breakthrough coming-of-age film that drew up the extremely realistic final May 1976 high school days of a group of Texas…

Kevin Costner plays a wicked Criminal confused by Reynolds’ part

Dress Kevin Costner down as a psychopathic do-badder who’s spent most of his life in one prison or another, and he can still own the screen. In fact, when Costner growls while in chains as Jericho Stewart, it’s fairly impossible not to get the willies. Smarten Ryan Reynolds up as a U.S. Agent in London…

Melissa McCarthy’s laughs as The Boss come despite her foul script

Melissa McCarthy us is our queen of comedy. The Boss won’t knock her off her thrown, no, what with her ample opportunities to use that wise timing, the familiar voice patterns, those physical pranks … Well, unless you’ve turned the channel on her long-running TV show Mike and Molly and subsequent rise on the big…

Sally Field hits the young crowd as Doris

Sally Field is so good as Doris Miller that you don’t know whether to love, hate or feel sorry for the sixtysomething running from her home on Staten Island to the office in Brooklyn. And what makes Hello, My Name Is Doris Miller so darn interesting is that it seems perfectly natural to do all…