If you’re looking for a dumb, disposable action movie in which Chris Hemsworth relentlessly shoots generic bad guys with only a few quick breaks to tend to his wounds and feel sorry for himself, Extraction is the movie for you. Actually, this R-rated Netflix bullet ballet is built for the …
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“God, what the hell is going on down there?” Jim Brockmire asks his producer, upon being told about the latest national tragedies they’ll have to acknowledge while broadcasting that day’s baseball game. “The apocalypse,” she replies bluntly. “Well,” Jim considers, “I guess everything else moves so much faster these days. …
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Released in 2000 and celebrated by international-horror nerds via videotapes passed around like viruses, Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-on helped usher in a wave of modern Japanese creepfests that slowly made their way west. The title translated as something like “The Curse”; it would eventually be better known as The Grudge. Along …
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In the first shot of this groundbreaking World War I film, two young British soldiers — lance corporals Schofield (George MacKay) and Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) — are caught napping in a field. It’s the last time they, or we in the audience, will be able to catch a breath. For …
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A documentary about a 55-year-old musical sounds like a quaint and nostalgic cinematic scrap book. But Fiddler:Miracle of Miraclesturns out be an exhilarating, expansive, warts-and-all look into 1964 Broadway phenomenonFiddler on the Roof. Director Max Lewkowicz delivers an emotional powerhouse in which none of the compromises, growing pains and ego …
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Superheroes — they’re so like us! We kid. Mere mortals can’t stop bullets and leap buildings in a single bound, or use our vast wealth to construct secret lairs and Batmobiles, or command the denizens of the seven seas, or run faster than the speed of light. But let’s say …
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There’s no endgame in sight for Spider-Man. As played by Brit wunderkind Tom Holland in a whoosh of boyish enthusiasm and lovesick angst, Spidey is flying higher than ever. That doesn’t mean this followup to 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming avoids lapsing into silliness and CGI overkill. (Spoiler: It sure as hell …
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Leningrad, the early 1980s: the Soviet Union’s stranglehold on its citizens continues, glasnost is not even a glimmer in Gorbachev’s eye and it feels as if the Party will never end. The one thing that does seem to be thriving, however, is the city’s underground rock scene, albeit one with …
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Fame knocks the hell out of Becky Something (Elisabeth Moss in a five-alarm fire blaze), a ’90’s indie punk rocker who leads a riot grrrl band that she bombards with near-constant verbal abuse. Those backstage tantrums can do damage to anyone who gets too close. Narcotics or narcissism? Pick your …
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Brett Ridgeman (Mel Gibson) is a cop. He’s been on the force for a while, long enough to see an old partner (Don Johnson) get a fancy desk job and help get a new partner, Anthony (Vince Vaughn), busted for excessive force. The two of them were filmed interrogating a …
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