Film Reviews

R | 1h 47min | Action, Adventure, Horror | 14 September 2018 (USA) The only good thing that can be said about 2018’s “The Predator” is that it finally explains what the heck Predators are really up to. The first film (1987), starring Arnold at the height of his pioneering, charismatic movie-bodybuilding-ness, had a completely […]

1h 24min | Documentary | 21 September 2018 (USA) The American equivalent of “Tea With the Dames” would be if Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, Diane Keaton, and Mary Steenburgen had tea together. Oh, wait, that already happened; it was a bad movie called “Book Club.” No, the only comparison that can be made between that […]

Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson’s sweeping new documentary film “Walking Thunder: Ode to the African Elephant” takes viewers on a journey across Africa of more than 15 years in the making. The couple, two award-winning photographers, focus their story on the elephant. However, they also pay tribute to other endangered species, such as the rhino, lion, cheetah, […]

R | 1h 57min | Crime, Drama, Mystery | 14 September 2018 (USA) Blake Lively’s a screen goddess. I’ve often wondered how she can be that stunningly attractive and that simultaneously sweet. Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds, says she always meets everything, including hatred, with empathy. This makes me, much like Napoleon Dynamite, want to close […]

1h 37min | Documentary | 28 September 2018 (USA) Free-solo rock climbing is the deadliest sport known to man. “Oh man, another climbing movie review?” Shhhh. Yes. This is good stuff. I recently reviewed “The Dawn Wall,” about the hardest free climb ever—3,000 feet up Yosemite’s El Capitan, hanging off fingertips. “Free Solo” is a […]

1h 15min | Documentary | 14 September 2018 (USA) “Letter From Masanjia” is a documentary about a handwritten letter discovered in a Kmart Halloween toy box, in Oregon a few years ago. It came from a Chinese labor camp, specializing in slave labor and torture. The letter was from a tortured toymaker, Sun Yi. His […]

1h 40min | Documentary, Adventure | 14 September 2018 (USA) World-class mountaineer and renowned author Greg Child once stayed at my apartment while he was in New York, giving a talk at the Alpine Club. I took him to Central Park’s “Rat Rock” and showed him a little climb I’d been working on for six […]

PG-13 | 2h 2min | Biography, Drama, History | 29 August 2018 (USA) Before we get started, here’s part of a poem to remind us of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis: Never Shall I Forget Never shall I forget that night, the first night in the camp … Never shall I forget that smoke. Never […]

R | 1h 31min | Action, Comedy, Crime | 24 August 2018 (USA) What’s the difference between “Christopher Robin” and “The Happytime Murders,” both in movie theaters now and both featuring stuffed toys that “act” with actual people? The former has a good message for children but will bore adults silly, and the latter is […]

After an unexpected five-day opening reaching $34.7 million over the weekend, the movie “Crazy Rich Asians” has received praise from the public, and even some very high-profile fans. Actress Emma Watson wrote on her Twitter account, “✨? Went to see my #TimesUp sisters @ConstanceWu and @gemma_chan in #CrazyRichAsians today. Their performances were pitch perfect! Love you […]

R | 1h 35min | Action, Adventure, Crime | 17 August 2018 (USA) What’s the only thing missing from Mark Wahlberg’s pretty perfect life? As I’ve said before, it’s been a long time since former rapper Marky Mark modeled Calvin Klein underwear on Times Square billboards, and that was already a pretty perfect life. Now, […]

PG-13 | 1h 53min | Action, Horror, Sci-Fi | 10 August 2018 (USA) It’s summer! Time for yet another shark movie! Nobody can re-do “Jaws,” although every shark movie since that 1975 classic has been basically a “Jaws” sequel. The ripple effect was prodigious. I’ve never gone in the ocean since. That stupid rubber shark […]

R | 1h 30min | Comedy | 24 August 2018 (USA) Last summer I rode with high-school classmate John and his biker crew—a bunch of ex-military, construction-worker Harley riders. We ended up at a Tilted Kilt down in Jersey. Are you familiar with Tilted Kilts? It’s a restaurant chain that exclusively employs a number of […]

The upcoming all-Asian film “Crazy Rich Asians” has reaped considerable success, with a 77 out of 100 rating on Metacritic, as well as 21 total positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, earning it a 100 percent fresh rating, according to Entertainment Weekly. The storyline of “Crazy Rich Asians” was adapted from the novel by Kevin Kwan. […]

R | 1h 57min | Action, Comedy | 3 August 2018 (USA) Mila Kunis—love her. Actually, I’m quite jealous of her husband, Ashton Kutcher. Mila Kunis is very beautiful. And very funny. But she just can’t make this “Spy” comedy stinker do anything other than that. First, there was the James Bond story by Ian […]

PG-13 | 2h 27min | Action, Adventure, Thriller | 27 July 2018 (USA) The artifice on which the “Mission Impossible” movies are based is the wearing of the latex masks. Scan someone’s face—bang—a hyper-realistic mask with perfect hair follicles materializes. Slap a Band-Aid tech thingy over your vocal chords—Shazam!—you sound exactly like whomever the Band-Aid […]

R | 2h 14min | Action, Crime, Thriller | 20 July 2018 (USA) Is Denzel Washington’s character in “The Equalizer 2” perhaps Prince T’Challa’s non-vibranium-enhanced, black-ops-agent uncle? I think so. Actually, the real question here is: Is agent Robert McCall secretly using vibranium, but director Antoine Fuqua is hiding that fact from us? Because agent […]

R | 1h 34min | Comedy | 13 July 2018 (USA) Do you remember eighth grade? I have good memories, but the quiet-but-potent “Eighth Grade” reminded me how much I’d forgotten the sheer pain of it all. Middle school is a rite of passage—a pilgrimage, or an odyssey, trying to get to the Land of […]

R | 1h 30min | Biography, Drama, History | 13 July 2018 (USA) Storywise, “Shock and Awe” could have been a contender; it could have been great. The problem is, it comes too close on the heels of “Spotlight” and “The Post,” two crackling newsroom dramas that, long after 1976’s “All the President’s Men” had […]

R | 2h 2min | Action, Crime, Drama | 29 June 2018 (USA) So, the Mexican border wall? “Sicario 2” is obliquely about that wall and makes a decent case for building one. The original “Sicario” (2015) was an under-the-radar hit, a mule-kick actioner about the nightmarish, MS-13 gang-populated drug cartels on the U.S.–Mexico border, featuring […]