How can one lonely little lawyer withstand mountain of influence and poison thrown out by Dupont, explores Dark Waters

Robert Bilott was minding his own business in an important top-attorney meeting at a Cincinnati law firm one fateful day in 1998 when he’s informed that there’s a visitor in the lobby who won’t leave without a face-to-face. Lives change when he takes that carton of videotapes(!) from West Virginia farmer Wilbur Tennant, who’s chronicled…

Can Jolie’s Maleficent match Pfeiffer’s really evil Queen Ingrith in this Disney follow-up?

Disney could not let this sleeping beauty lie fallow. Maleficent and its winged star played by Angelina Jolie was just too darn successful back in 2014. So we got the crowded story of Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, a sequel that serves up a truly wicked queen played by another star of note, Michelle Pfeiffer. This…

What can go wrong when kids and smokejumpers share a firehouse in Playing with Fire …

What to do when a trio of kids has to bunk in with four equally precocious firefighters? Oh, wait. Jake Carson, the big and burly guy whom the world within Playing with Fire revolves, would right away jump in and correct us that they are smokejumpers, yes. Firefighters, no. That’s what this leader of the…

Bale and Damon get the rivalry revving in Ford v. Ferrari

Motors really used to move us. Hearts raced at the sight, sound and thought of what each company’s car could do when it rolled out and reacted to the touch of that right foot, correct? Yes, so much was at stake for the owners, builders and racers back in the day, because motor heads and…

There’s more than one in The Good Liar

Oh, those lonely seniors. They sit there on a London matchmaking site, typing in their sly little fibs to score another in a series of lunch dates. Hopeful for more. Always hopeful for more. Then something happens between these two, and a reckoning begins. Both admit the online names were false. To protect themselves, you…

Seth Green flexes all his talents with Changeland

Brandon is not quite in the mood to take the vacation to Thailand he’s planned. It’s supposed to be an anniversary excursion with his wife. Instead, he meets up with longtime friend Dan, and off they go for three days full of explaining why they’re their and trying to make the most of that circumstance.…

It takes load of good acting jobs to sum up The Goldfinch

A great novel might not be the easiest path to a glorious movie. And Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2014. Director John Crowley and screenwriter Peter Straughan obviously were devoted to their project a half-decade later. The CinemaScope is grand. The cast is wonderful. The storytelling … well, it’s…

Judi Dench wrings really old sorrow out of Red Joan

Milita Norwood went through her golden years as quietly as she could, a retired British servant who’d given to her country proudly and humbly. Then that shoe everybody talks about fell. Heck, two shoes. An anvil. Red Joan is taken from a real-life tale, they say, though the movie directed by Trevor Nunn from Lindsay…

Zellweger surely becomes the part in Judy

Having only the clear memory of the young Dorothy of countless viewings of The Wizard of Oz and fuzzy recollections of the aging actress that players her that showed up on my TV in black-and-white in various programs my parents watched during my youth to go on, I cannot say that Renee Zellweger’s portrayal of…

The Peanut Butter Falcon hits the sweet spot

Zak doesn’t lack for endless spirit or proper anger, living as a twentysomething in a center for seniors somewhere in the south. He’s a fellow with no family, a man with Down syndrome, a resident who’s won over his roommate in his quest to escape that lonely existence into the big, wild world. They’ve watched…