Oh, those precocious princesses may make you appreciate the Royals

The Royals fascinate America. No news flash here, what with the morning shows rushing over to televise the tight waves high from the balcony of Buckingham Palace every time Queen Elizabeth and her son Charles and his sons with divorced but still beloved but gone Princess Diana marry, make babies … The human drama these…

Thank you, Sly, for handing our Rocky over to a smart new Creed

Not one bit of the movie franchise fanfare this year has gone to the rebirth of the tale of the tough boxer from Philadelphia who could take on all the punches, literally and figuratively, the world could throw at him. With Star Wars: The Force Awakens about to burst forth from Disneydom and The Hunger…

It’s over for The Hunger Games, and it’s epic

Talk about war and peace. Katniss Everdeen rests. The fourth and likely finale in the Hunger Games franchise that started with the girl who fired an arrow into the hearts of so many in 2012 landed in America’s theaters this pre-Thanksgiving weekend with its snowballing success and great expectations for star Jennifer Lawrence and the…

The 33 allows you to root for the winner you know

If you had your ears open in 2010, you likely heard the tale of the miners stuck deep down in belly of that Chilean mine. It was the kind of event that moves the world’s talkers to tell all. The horror of the collapse. The despair of repeated failure to connect with the possible pocket…

The Peanuts gang happily circles around Charlie Brown

The kids, a whole bunch of them piled into a Saturday afternoon matinée in the biggest and plushest of Regal Cinemas’ Syracuse theaters in Syracuse mall Shoppingtown, admired The Peanuts Movie enough to sit still and at attention through 119 minutes. The adults, parents and grandparents and others who’ve grown up with the screen and…

Sandra Bullock doesn’t give a damn until she creates a Crisis

When Jane Bodine answers the door to the political operatives who want to win her sly services at the start of Our Brand Is Crisis, the campaign specialist is checked out, home alone “between two mountains” as she carefully explains to them. And even though she agrees to join the crew back in Bolivia, the…

Bill Murray finds himself taking a shot in Rock the Kasbah

There’s no doubt that agent Richie Lanz is playing among the lesser lights in the biz no matter how much he boasts about his connections and his past. He may have discovered Madonna at a hamburger joint and told Jimi Hendrix to play The Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock in The Day, but right now…

Tom Hanks stands out in the Cold War spy game

Tom Hanks is great in Bridge of Spies. For 141 minutes, he owns the screen as Cold War attorney James B. Donovan. The script carefully crafted by Matt Charman and Ethan and Joel Coen places us in 1957, in the city, where CIA agents are chasing a painter played exquisitely by Mark Rylance. The crafty…

What a Birthday Week it’s been with my dear wife Karen

Every mid-October, the Birthday Week celebration for my dear wife Karen kicks in. I’m a fan for the extended celebration, for her. (My December birthday as the older of our pair, I tend to want to mark on just that day.) Yee-hah 2015 started before the birthday proper. It included a requested trip to the…

You can’t help but get pumped when he’s up on the wire for The Walk

When Philippe Petit is up there on his wire, I couldn’t help but love The Walk cowriter and director Robert Zemeckis made sure of that. The master of cool special effects made the most of the true tale of the French tightrope-walker, who had the audacity and nerve to pull what he calls The Coup.…