Tom Hanks stands out in the Cold War spy game

Tom Hanks is great in Bridge of Spies. For 141 minutes, he owns the screen as Cold War attorney James B. Donovan. The script carefully crafted by Matt Charman and Ethan and Joel Coen places us in 1957, in the city, where CIA agents are chasing a painter played exquisitely by Mark Rylance. The crafty…

The Martian takes Matt Damon to lofty places

Left behind on Mars as dead, astronaut Mark Watney isn’t. And so, faced with scant food rations, among his many woes, the American astronaut goes botanist bonzai, using his wits and intelligence to come up with a way to grow a crop in, well, his own crap. That leads him to the second-best line of…

Who wouldn’t want to learn from a gentle DeNiro?

Ben Whittaker has done the travel thing, the exercise thing and the grandpa thing in his retirement world, and none of it is exactly making the 70-year-old widow from Brooklyn happy. Oh, he’s not complaining, mind you, as he faces the camera explaining exactly how he’s gotten to this point in life as we meet…

In Black Mass, Johnny Depp has evil down cold

Quite the block in South Boston that was that gave the world the Bulger brothers and John Connolly. Black Mass tells the tale with a deep and horrible chill. Directed by Scott Cooper by a script from Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth, this crime drama documentary is 122 minutes full of high ambition and low…

Next time a stranger offers to pay for that coffee …

Oh, her life looks so good. Big house on a beautiful street, with a slightly nosy neighbor who’s really just looking out for her. Great job, a decision-maker and rising star in a major lobbyist firm. But, wait. In this thriller written by Tyger Williams and directed by David M. Rosenthal, something has to shake…

A Walk in the Woods doesn’t much rile Redford

At the start of A Walk in the Woods, travel writer Bill Bryson is being interviewed on a Boston morning TV show. The host is a silly man, sure, over-the-top in his pomposity and self-importance, but he sure does drive home his point as he grills his guy living comfortably with his family in New…

In No Escape, a family man faces the worst

If you’re thinking about traveling to Asia, don’t see No Escape. If you’re about to take your family to a different country, don’t see No Escape. If you’ve just taken a new job and are about to relocate to another city, don’t see No Escape. Come to think of it, just don’t go see No…

American Ultra finally allows the haze to clear

At the start of American Ultra, a beat-up and bloody dude by the name of Mike is asked how he got to such a state by an authoritative figure. Wanting to be supportive, he starts to answer. Instead we get quick panels of flashbacks. Sitting in a late Friday afternoon showing in the Regal Cinemas…