Sean Anders and his wife adopted children cross-culturally, undertaking a more difficult task than making audiences laugh with?We are the Millers, She’s Out of My League,?and the?Daddy’s Home?films. Thanks to the success he had writing and directing those other films, Paramount Pictures’ greenlit Anders’ more intimate project,?Instant Family. Here, Anders told his story, and the…
In the second installment of the?Creed?saga or the seventh chapter in the?Rocky?series, depending on your perspective, Sylvester Stallone’s script finds Michael B. Jordan’s Adonis Creed wrestling with fatherhood, marriage, and the ghosts of the past, namely?Florian “Big Nasty” Munteanu’s Viktor Drago. Drago is of course the son of Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren), the fighter who…
In?Wreck-It Ralph, John C. Reilly’s villainous video game character Ralph goes off script, yearning to become a hero, and befriends another video game character, Sugar Rush’s?Vanellope von Schweetz. The two of them cause problems, seek out solutions, and end up figuring out what it means to be themselves… until now. When Vanellope finally admits that…
Thirty years ago, Walt Disney Studios was experiencing a lull. Yes,?Who Framed Roger Rabbit??had done some exciting things with animation and live-action blended together, but the 1980s had only provided?The Fox & The Hound, The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective,?and?Oliver & Company… After?The Little Mermaid, Disney would break off a string of successes that…
Warner Bros.? Doom Patrol serves up strange, mangled delights that put the ?anti? in anti-hero. The group was teased out of Titans, a clearly adult take on a group that?s no longer teen-affiliated, and just enough of their banter was shown to make me re-up for some more viewing.Where can you see an angry teenager…
Stieg Larrson’s Girl with a Dragon Tattoo is back, but the new story is by?David Lagercrantz and the Girl, Lisbeth Salander, is now played by Claire Foy. While the plot revolves around Firefall, a computer program of co-opting nuclear control codes, it’s still a twisted look at Salander’s childhood and her subsequent efforts to right…
Gone are the days when a cast of white men carry the action thriller. Since the premiere of?The Fast & The Furious, the tide has risen, bringing diversity and creativity to Hollywood’s action films.?Widows, a heist film with political ramifications and a deep dive into the stages of grief, shows good and evil on both…
At the end of the first season of Netflix’s?The Punisher, Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal, The Walking Dead) is worn-down, bloody and wounded, but unbeaten by his friend-turned-nemesis Billy Russo (Ben Barnes,?Westworld). As the second (and final?) season of the bloody vigilante series unfolds, we recognize that Castle has bounced back physically, but that he wrestles…
In I am the Night, Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman) teams with Chris Pine to deliver a better-than-cable-worthy miniseries about the Black Dahlia murders to TNT. Here, Pine is the anti-leading man, a disgraced news reporter named Jay Singletary who can’t let go of an old story about an illegal abortion clinic run by respected physician…
In?Castle Rock, the Hulu original series based on the world that author Stephen King horrifically mastered, a long-forgotten inmate in Shawshank State Penitentiary is discovered when the warden commits suicide and untouched areas of the prison are examined. When an estranged son of Castle Rock is called in as the inmate’s lawyer, a series of…
