The truth is, Adrift makes you feel rooted to Woodley’s talent

Tell Shailene Woodley that she’s Tami Oldham, and the actress is all in. Director Baltasar Kormákur uses the great work from Woodley – and to some measure co-star Sam Claflin as Richard Sharp – to make you feel like you’re living every twist and turn with them. Aaron Kandell, Jordan Kandell and David Branson Smith…

The 15:17 to Paris showcases its real heroes, but are they up for this second act?

There’s so much going for The 15:17 to Paris. It’s a true tale of heroism on the rails from Amsterdam to Paris. Clint Eastwood directs, yes, a guy who knows Hollywood action from his old days playing tough cop Dirty Harry to modern times leading the grit in American Sniper and so many ways in…

Bohemian Rhapsody sings to the challenge of channeling Freddie Mercury

If you lived through and paid any sort of attention to the real life and times of one Freddie Mercury and the band he led called Queen, you should recall that their spotlight burned bright and hot. The front man for this band from the U.K. handled fame, fortune and his life in a big,…

The family of capers has more satisfying twists for you as Debbie takes over in Ocean’s Eight

Danny Ocean is gone, we find out in the fourth installment of the franchise that made his last name and big crime game famous, but his sister Debbie is fresh out of prison and ready to take up in the family passion. Director Gary Ross gives the world from his screenplay written with Olivia Milch…

So they brought back Halloween, with all of its grisly glory

It’s A-OK that director David Gordon Green chose to pretend that all those other Halloweens never happened. When you have the original pair dreamed up by John Carpenter and Debra Hill four decades go, horror fans don’t need the turns the franchise took in the nine films thereafter. So the world gets Jamie Lee Curtis…

Chappaquiddick provides a hard look at what the Kennedys could do

Ted Kennedy may have been ready to presidentially emerge from that enormous family sibling shadow come the fall of 1969. Or not. In Chappaquiddick, director John Curran takes the screenplay of Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan and revisits the series of events that took place out on Cape Cod the summer of 1969 and how…

So you want to know how Mary Shelley got a monster in her life?

The story about the making of this particular monster really is quite a dilly. In Mary Shelley, director Haifa Al-Mansour takes us back to the life and times of the teenager in London with the marvelous mind and precarious stepping-stones that led her to the writing of one of the most famous novels of all…

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.…

These Crazy Rich Asians provide a joyful ride

Crazy Rich Asians serves up a generous helping of the good, the bad and the ugly. And the beautiful. Oh, how this two hours directed by Jon M. Chu from a screenplay be Peter Chiarelli and Adele Liz based on the novel from Kevin Kwan gorgeous. The cast is led by Constance Wu and Henry…