In The Edge of Seventeen, life teeters on all the realistic emotions

Remember high school? There was kid who had to be liked and that kid who didn’t want to be liked. Sometimes they were the same kid on different days. Sometimes, maybe, that kid was even you. At the center of The Edge of Seventeen is Nadine. As written by and directed by Kelly Fremont Craig…

The Rock tries really hard to keep the Baywatch cheese from being too stinky

You can’t go to a reboot of the late 1980s TV beach ogler Baywatch without expecting a whopping serving of cheesecake shots and cheesy lines, plot and setups. The old school version, original network run and for years in syndication, gave America the team of David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson as Mitch Buchannon and C.J.…

Everywhere Everywhere leaves me feeling nowhere

Another movie taken from the pages from a YA novel, is this romantic excursion Everything, Everything. I’ve stopped treading so lightly to these Young Adult fests, having been thoroughly pulled into the treatments of The Fault of Our Stars, Paper Towns and, episode by episode, the dystopian-ness of The Hunger Games and Divergent. So I…

Amy Schumer, Goldie Hawn grab my guilty laughs in Snatched

You couldn’t help but root for Amy Schumer in her movie premiere from 2015, Trainwreck. Now that was a romantic comedy that showed off every bid of her wit and wisdom, as she wrote and starred as a woman who learned from life and about herself to grow into something special. The direction of prolific…

Michael Keaton serves up a two-faced sandwich as Mickey D’s Founder Kroc

I wonder if anybody back in the day had the gumption to hang him with the nickname “What A.” As in, Ray “What A” Kroc. You might have known the very rich guy as the man behind the billions of burgers served up by McDonald’s. But as the movie Founder starring Michael Keaton as Ray…

At the nub of Allied stands the gulf between love and war in Brad Pitt’s heart

Director Robert Zemeckis takes us gorgeously into the heart of Morocco at the start of Allied as Steven Knight’s script deposits Canadian war agent Max Vatan into the heat of the anti-Nazi espionage, to meet French colluder Marianne Beauséjour for a mission dangerous, deep, deadly and … yes, romantic. Think Casablanca if you wish. The…

You can’t help but root for J-La and C-Pratt as the lonely Passengers

Imagine buying a spot on a really cool spaceship that’s scheduled to land on another world 90 years down the road. Your fee earns you 90 or so years in a hibernation chamber. A few months before landing, you and your co-passengers will awaken to an indoctrination session led by androids that will provide lessons…

The Fate of the Furious is to keep our eyes popping, still

When a movie franchise reaches installment eight, fans are going to the theater either out of habit, fierce loyalty or morbid curiosity. Maybe even some fearful combination of all of the above. Have no fear, lovers of the whiz-bang that started way back in 2001 with The Fast and the Furious. Vin Diesel as the…

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…

CHIPS isn’t exactly TV nostalgia, but there’s still something funny about Dax Shephard

If you’re one of the many millions who’ve taken comfort in the motorcycle-riding savvy and people skills of Jon Baker and Frank Llewelyn Poncherello in the half-drama, half-comedy TV hour CHiPs that maneuvered its way into our social mosaic on NBC from 1977 to 1983 and through syndication and streaming seemingly thereafter, you may have…