Melissa McCarthy sweetly returns to college as Life of the Party

So a middle-aged set of parents drop their daughter off for her senior year at college, and as soon as they reach the car for the ride back home, hubby tells the wife that he wants a divorce. In the hands of Melissa McCarthy and her real-life husband Ben Falcone, this is quite fertile ground…

It’s a wild ride in Jumanji’s jungle

Transformation is the name of the game in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. Four high schoolers of extremely different social strata are tossed into a detention session closet and told to remove staples from a magazine project or something a ludicrous. If they don’t finish, they’ll have to return on Saturday. I don’t believe it.…

Four time-honored stars can’t really deepen the Shades of Book Club

As the wonderful, honorable stars do their reliably good work in Book Club, I’m still not ever quite all there. It’s not them, it’s me. Heck, it’s the premise of this entire comedy presented by director Bill Holderman from his screenplay with Erin Simms. We’re servied a quartet of women that are quite rightly considered…

Procession of Father Figures lead these twins down their twisting path

So Hollywood decides to green light an R-rated buddy story about twin brothers who look and act nothing like each other who find out at their mother’s wedding that the guy they believed was their dad: One: Wasn’t their dad. Two: Wasn’t dead. Three: Was Terry Bradshaw. Owen Wilson and Ed Helm must still hold…

Goodbye Christopher Robin shines a light on the bitter within A.A. Milne’s sweet

You may have seen the recent TV commercial trailer with the adored Winnie the Pooh bouncing back to life for movie Christopher Robin. They lost the race to 2017’s Goodbye Christopher Robin. This is not that. Do not confuse this year’s Disney work with last year’s pioneering piece directed by Simon Curtis from a screenplay…

Amy Schumer shows her fearless side in I Feel Pretty

Picture a woman going about her working life for a glamorous fashion company … on the IT side, pushed into a two-person office in a dark, dank basement. Picture this woman posing for a dating app photo with her pair equally not-so-cutting edge besties, a trio getting their hopes up as they snap away, imagining…

It may not follow all the facts, but I Can Only Imagine sure hits the sweet spot

Life sure didn’t come easy for young Bart Millard. His father was a tough and mean cuss. The kind that went way past the line, too, to physical violence. His mom up and left them to fend for themselves. And onward Bart went, with God in his life thanks to a Christian camp, and good…

Game Night will keep you guessing about the rules and reality

Are they or aren’t they? Well, for sure Max and Annie are total freaks for competition. For that, their friends who gather in their lovely living room for their weekly Game Night fun and games love them. Then comes the fateful night and a tipping point. Directors John Francis Daley and Jonathon Goldstein take the…

Frances McDormand carries Three Billboards to its killer ending

Frances McDormand is perfect for a part set in a faraway place, as a dogged woman who puts her mind to something and then won’t let go, no way, no how. In Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, the tireless McDormand tears into the part of Mildred, a mother with one heck of a weight to…

Liam Neeson careens into a rail of trouble in The Commuter

What would the action-thriller with the pinch of drama be without the steady presence of a Liam Neeson flick? His daughter was Taken and the response to his CIA agent Bryan Mills was such that he and his wife are hostages in the sequel and then he himself is accused of murder in installment three.…