When they label this Jumanji: The Next Level, they speak the truth

When a studio goes back for another bucket from the well, movie-watchers will wonder if what comes up this Time will quench their need, cue the gag reflex, or maybe even make them thirst for more. Director and co-writer Jake Kasdan has come up with a refreshing tale in Jumanji: The Next Level. With screenplay…

There’s more than one in The Good Liar

Oh, those lonely seniors. They sit there on a London matchmaking site, typing in their sly little fibs to score another in a series of lunch dates. Hopeful for more. Always hopeful for more. Then something happens between these two, and a reckoning begins. Both admit the online names were false. To protect themselves, you…

Seth Green flexes all his talents with Changeland

Brandon is not quite in the mood to take the vacation to Thailand he’s planned. It’s supposed to be an anniversary excursion with his wife. Instead, he meets up with longtime friend Dan, and off they go for three days full of explaining why they’re their and trying to make the most of that circumstance.…

It takes load of good acting jobs to sum up The Goldfinch

A great novel might not be the easiest path to a glorious movie. And Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2014. Director John Crowley and screenwriter Peter Straughan obviously were devoted to their project a half-decade later. The CinemaScope is grand. The cast is wonderful. The storytelling … well, it’s…

Judi Dench wrings really old sorrow out of Red Joan

Milita Norwood went through her golden years as quietly as she could, a retired British servant who’d given to her country proudly and humbly. Then that shoe everybody talks about fell. Heck, two shoes. An anvil. Red Joan is taken from a real-life tale, they say, though the movie directed by Trevor Nunn from Lindsay…