Denzel Washington casts an imposing figure in Fences, but Viola Davis won’t be overlooked

Denzel Washington slams grand at the center of August Wilson’s family tale Fences. Washington directed and stands tall (and wide) as Troy Maxson, the self-made leader of his gathering in the proud little brick house in a lower-class African American Pittsburgh neighborhood. Wilson adapted the screenplay from his Pulitzer Prize-winning drama that premiered in 1987…

Get ready for all kinds of sad with Manchester by the Sea

If you haven’t caught up to the big, little indie from the mind and pen of Kenneth Lonergan, please do get hold of Manchester by the Sea some way, somehow. My dear wife Karen and I sat transfixed in front of the flat screen after I brought home a Blu-Ray from my job at the…

Make no mistake, Moonlight delivers powerful emotions

Barry Jenkins got so much right with Moonlight. When I caught up with this year’s Academy Award winner for the coveted Best Picture trophy on my flat screen with my dear wife Karen, I sat stock still following the three-part telling of the life and times of a boy, teen and man named Chiron as…

The Sapphires brings a needed shine to Aboriginal talent

The photo of Chris O’Dowd in a hipster singing pose with the interestingly arranged women surrounding him caught my attention on the Blu-Ray rack at the Liverpool Public Library. The Sapphires, I mused to myself, rolling the title around for a moment before I pulled it and checked it out at my workplace for viewing…

You never know when you’ll fall in like with the spies next door

Opposites sure do attract. Movies like Keeping Up With the Joneses wouldn’t have it any other way. This action-adventure-comedy directed by Greg Mottola from a screenplay by Michael LeSieur sends a godly secret agent couple played by statuesque Jon Hamm and Gal Godot undercover into an Atlanta cu de sac populated by the scrupulously ordinary…

Oh, baby, Bridget Jones delivers some laughs and affection for the franchise

Oh, that Bridget Jones. She falls for smooth-talking sports agent who had her from hello … Wait a minute. That was Renée Zellweger’s character in Jerry Maguire. That one was from the Way Wayback Machine, in 1996, when she played a sweet and innocent woman who entangles herself with Tom Cruise’s Jerry despite herself, but…

Woody Allen’s Cafe Society lets us love his characters but not his whole story

Woody Allen did a lot right in his direction of Cafe Society, the Hollywood legend’s period piece about a New York City kid coming of age in the 1930s. Bobby Dorfman moves to Tinseltown and takes up under the tutelage of his bigwig agent uncle Phil Stern, hoping to learn about the life and maybe…

Mike and Dave find the dates they deserve

Zac Efron has not been on what you’d call a winning streak with me. I hated Neighbors. If humanly possible, I despised Dirty Grandpa even more. Too despicable. Too deplorable. Too demeaning. D-minus. And yet I checked out Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates from my place of work having seen the trailer and doing…

Now You See Me 2 keeps you guessing again and again and again

The Four Horseman are back, sort of, to tease the world with their powers and make things right as rain. Of course, as audiences discovered, mostly to their delight in the 2013 illusion-meets-magic-turns-into-caper eyebrow-lifter Now You See Me, don’t be so certain that what you believe one moment will be remotely close to what you…

In While We’re Young, Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts play age as more than a state of mind

Ben Stiller’s character Josh is somewhat futilely teaching a college class about film, as makers of documentaries who somehow find themselves tip-toeing into their mid-40s while still working on his second piece for close to a decade now. Damn that malfunctioning PowerPoint. After, a robust young couple engage him in conversation about his lecture, and…