Movie Reviews

To say that the first trailer for Beauty and the Beast was evocative of the 1991 animated classic would be an understatement; it was a live-action carbon copy, and if Disney’s remake of Cinderella was any indication, we were in for yet another tedious — if visually stunning, well-acted…

Kong: Skull Island may be set in the early 1970s, but it’s clearly engineered for modern sensibilities. The film’s trailer drew comparisons to Apocalypse Now, but director Jordan Vogt-Roberts seems less inspired by Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War film than its iconic poster o…

Here’s the pitch: two women with grudges from their past reunite at a party years later. Fueled by alcohol and gallons of rage, they start beating the living crap out of each other. I’m not talking about some light hair-pulling or petty slapping; I’m talking full-on rampant viol…

The first X-Men movie opened on July 14, 2000. A child born early that year would have just turned 17 by the time the tenth entry in the X-Men series, Logan, hits theaters next month. That is fortunate – viewers are going to need a driver’s license to get into this movie, which possess…

The Great Wall has garnered controversy for its white savior narrative that finds Matt Damon, a white dude, saving an ancient Chinese dynasty from mythical monsters. But the most offensive thing about The Great Wall isn’t even the racial dynamic, or Damon’s painfully bad Irish/Scottish…

There are few films that scare me as much as The Ring remake scared me the first time I saw it, and the second, and the third. Director Gore Verbinski has knack for crafting menacing atmospheres with stylish visuals, and after The Ring I was afraid to look at TV screens and was disturbed by the mere…

Fifty Shades of Grey was so flavorless and forgettable that I actually had to go back and look at my review to see what I thought of it. (SPOILER ALERT: I didn’t like it.) In that regard, Fifty Shades Darker is a very faithful sequel; a milquetoast continuation of a bland romance between two …

In 2014, a pair of veteran stunt coordinators introduced the world to John Wick, a former assassin who rages out of retirement to seek revenge on the man who killed his puppy and stole his car. With action as sharp and seemingly seamless as the impeccable suits worn by its eponymous protagonist, Joh…

It’s a question that has perplexed Batman villains since at least 1989: “Where does he get those wonderful toys?” Finally, we have an answer. The LEGO Store. The one a few blocks from Warner Bros.’ New York offices currently sells at least eight different LEGO Batman sets…

Cate Blanchett is a force unlike any other on screen. Over the years we’ve watched her bring her vivacity to characters like Galadriel, Bob Dylan, Katherine Hepburn, Carol Aird, and Queen Elizabeth I. If it wasn’t already clear that Blanchett is one of the greatest actors of our time, …