This isn?t about being pro-war. The war is happening. This is about being pro-money.–Efraim In his latest film,?The Hangover?trilogy director Todd Philips dramatizes the unlikely rise of Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill) and David Packouz (Miles Teller), who found loopholes in the military’s use of privately-owned weapons to build a gun-running empire. As international arms dealers,…
Burt Kennedy, the director behind?Support Your Local Sheriff!?and a host of others (including?Suburban Commando), delivered Raquel Welch in the titular role of Hannie Caulder. Caulder is the victim first – as she watches her husband murdered, her ranch torched, and her body left broken and for dead – before she becomes the force of vigilante…
Marlon Brando directed one film, One-Eyed Jacks. The short version: in 1961, he adapted Guy Trosper’s (The Pride of St. Louis) script into a film that he largely shaped in his own way, with cinematographer Charles Lang nominated for an Academy Award (after Stanley Kubrick and Sam Peckinpah were removed from their respective roles). The…
Finding Dory served up a sequel/spinoff of the world that Nemo inhabited, with Ellen DeGeneres’ squeaky regal blue tang heading off in search of the family she had long forgotten about. With the help of Nemo and his dad Marlin, as well as a new cast of characters including the near-sighted whale Destiny, the echo-location-free…
“The past is already written. Stay too long where you don?t belong and you will never return.”– Three-Eyed Raven The sixth season of HBO’s?Game of Thrones?has received critical renown (winning twelve of its twenty-three nominations for Emmys) and grown the fan base that watches each episode. Combining original material with elements of two previously written…
Paul Schrader wrote/co-wrote Raging Bull, Last Temptation of Christ, Taxi Driver, and Bringing Out the Dead, films directed by Martin Scorsese. But with Dog Eat Dog, Schrader directs an eclectic cast that serves up a weirdly engaging film based on Edward Bunker?s 1995 novel. Unfortunately, Schrader didn’t write this – and it doesn’t come close…
When Curtis Gentry (Craig Robinson) relocates to Germany to get a new job, while still recovering from the death of his wife, the culture shock reverberates through his whole system. That system primarily includes Mo (Markees Christmas), his thirteen-year-old son who believes he will become the next big rapper … but now finds himself struggling…
Adam West was the first ‘famous’ person I ever interacted with, as a twelve-year-old stammering my way up for an autograph. He signed my 1980s era edition of a Batman comic and we watched the feature-length film that he and Burt Ward filmed, 1966’s Batman: the Movie. It was glorious, but the world has moved…
In?Sea of Trees, the real-life Japanese forest at the base of Mount Fuji (Aokigahara) proves to be as much of a character in the story Gus Van Sant tells. Arthur Brennan (Matthew McConaughey) is a man adrift, prepared to kill himself in the Aokigahara as he mourns his wife (Naomi Watts). But when he meets…
The third installment in the J.J. Abrams-rebooted?Star Trek?series,?Beyond?takes us farther than the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise believes it has gone before. The film has remarkable panache – thanks to a top flight class – and a storyline about authority, power, calling, and friendship that wraps itself around a galactic struggle. While considering a promotion/retirement…
