There’s a lot to run from and toward with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

Do not expect to feel all warm and fuzzy about Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. Yes, director Ang Lee’s latest big screen spectacle is about a homecoming tour of triumph. Yes, the screenplay of Jean-Christophe Castelli based on the novel of the same name by Ben Fountain tackles the theme of hero soldiers returning from…

When it comes to alien movies, Arrival attempts to communicate new things

Are they here to help us or are they here to hurt us? That’s the crux of Arrival from the start to finish of the 1-hour, 56-minute science fiction offering from director Denis Villeneuve and screenwriter Eric Heisserer. Taken from the short story The Story of My Life by Ted Chiang, this is a they-came-from-outer-space…

Does the world need a pretty good movie about Roberto Duran?

No question that Roberto Duran, he of the Hands of Stone, was one of the best fighters in the world, the scrappy soul from Panama who threw his first professional punch in 1968 and remained relevant in the ring way into the 1990s. The man could hit. That’s evident in the tale of his life…

In War Dogs, everybody waits for the magic bullet to go off

Miles Teller and Jonah Hill are all grown up in War Dogs. Director Todd Phillips, too. Teller left any signs of his snide teen dystopia days and Hill the goof from Superbad and the pair of 21 Jump Street flicks, while the only thing Phillips brought along from his going, going, gone Hangover trilogy was…

How awful that Meryl Streep can even act like she can sing like Florence Foster Jenkins

Back in the high society days when newspapers ran popular opinion, soldiers fought and relaxed en masses and something called records were played on a gadget by the name of the radio, there was a woman by the name of Florence Foster Jenkins who lived for music. But the circumstances of her life conspired against…

There’s a lot to like about the rotten heroes of Suicide Squad

What happens when you go to the tightest jail to collect a handful of the baddest people — that last word used loosely, for this is the comic book world, after all — to save the world? A divide between critics who pan the movie and diehard fans who rally behind Suicide Squad, it turns…

Matt Damon is Jason Bourne again, so people must die

To say that things get heavy when old connection Nicky hunts down former operative Jason Bourne on the streets of Greece to let him know that she’s hacked into the agency’s files to find the secrets about his past he’s been longing to discover doesn’t quite put the reunion of main man Matt Damon and…

Latest Star Trek feels a lot like TV days, and that’s OK

Would Justin Lin make my favorite Star Trek crew members faster or more furious? Yes, but it may take a while. And, well, maybe a little. And in the case of Star Trek Beyond, the work of the director of the Fast and Furiousfranchise turned out to be a pretty nice touch for James T.…

Screen gem presentation

I floated the idea right here just a few days ago. It was a dream, really, that notion that it was time to trade in my iPad Air 2 for the iPad Logic 12-inch model. You can pretty much guess what I’m using to compose this blog post this wonderful Saturday afternoon, can’t you? It…

The Rock shows Hart and smarts in Central Intelligence

The main guys in Central Intelligence sure were different 20 years ago, we see in the flashback that sets up the action comedy starring Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart. The Rock as Robbie Weirdicht was the picked-upon high school doughboy dancing in the locker room shower until the Mean Boys pulled him out and slid…