Finally,?finally, Peter Jackson’s epic six-film project based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth novels has wrapped, and extended edition versions have been released. Here, Bard the Bowman defeats Smaug the Dragon; Thorin the dwarf loses his mind; orcs, elves, men, goblins, and dwarves battle. And we’re all set to find ourselves back watching?The Fellowship of the…
You’re seven years old and your entire existence has been contained in a garden shed. You and your mother name each of the elements of your life and they become your friends. Your mother tries to protect you and keep you from danger, but one day, she realizes that she cannot. You do not know…
The James Bond canon has reached the end of Daniel Craig’s run- he will most definitely not be back. So where does?Spectre?fall on the spectrum? What are there greatest films featuring the suave British spy? Which films should never have been made? The Duds: #24 through #17 — There’s a whole lot of Roger Moore?here….
Amy Schumer’s team-up with Judd Apatow,?Trainwreck, arrived on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD without the fanfare that it might have a few months ago. A casualty in another theater shooting, the film deserves more attention, even if it is a jumbled cocktail that fails to completely blend. Schumer’s insights?are?powerful and funny, even if we don’t…
As the one person I know who enjoyed?Terminator: Salvation, I was sure that I would find something to like in the universally panned fifth installment of the franchise. Here, future John Connor (Jason Clarke) sends Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) back in time to save Connor’s mother, Sarah (Emilia Clarke, no relation except to the Targaryens),…
What do Starbucks, Seth Rogen, & Jesus have in common? I’m all for apologetics, the “reasoned arguments or writings in justification of something, typically a theory or religious doctrine.” In their place and in their time. But why do people of faith find themselves hung up on apologetics when it comes to films made by…
“For a paper to best perform its function, it must stand alone.”–Marty Baron In 2001, a new editor arrived at The Boston Globe, pushing the newspaper’s investigative team to look into the Catholic sex scandal in Massachusetts. Instead of assuming that the Catholic church’s hierarchy?and the legal system are actually exposing the truth, editor Marty…
When the news broke that Daniel Craig would be succeeding Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, it seemed highly improbable. He is, of course, blond, not dark-haired. He had starred in Layer Cake, which lent itself to being hard to understand, and hardly debonair. How could an actor of no real background be the ?tall, dark,…
It doesn’t take long in?The Gift?for the audience to figure out that not everything is what it seems. While Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn (Rebecca Hall) seem like the perfect couple (not quite the Waltons, but…) they’re bound to have life as they know it blow up in their faces because that is the kind…
Alien life forms have interpreted 1980s messages sent into space as a challenge. Now, they have arrived on Earth to ‘play’ through three rounds of attacks to decide whether or not the Earth will be destroyed. Only a group of video game-playing thirty- and forty-year-old slackers can stop them.? If that sounds wildly entertaining –…
