With Knives Out, American director Rian Johnson has traded in Dashiell Hammet — the inspiration for his 2005 debut feature Brick — for the locked-room murder mysteries of Agatha Christie. In but one of the movie’s stridently self-aware touches, the setting is the estate…
It’s hard to believe that rocker turned horror auteur Rob Zombie would become one of the most divisive filmmakers of the 21st century. His debut feature, 2003’s House of 1000 Corpses, was fetishistic in its re-creation of ’70s-era exploitation flicks, right down his use…
After thwarting the terrorist takeovers of both Washington, D.C. in Olympus Has Fallen and in London, in — naturally — London Has Fallen, legendary Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) returns. And if the title here is meant to make any sense whatsoever,…
There’s something clunky about the title John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum. Parabellum means “prepare for war”, and this third entry in Keanu Reeves’ saga of the greatest hitman who ever lived is indeed in conflict with itself. What began as a simple story of…
Other than as blatant studio IP management, there is no real reason for this Hellboy to exist. Some executive realized, hey, we have a superhero comic book character just sitting there, going unused, waiting for franchise rebirth. The problem is that the first two…
After surviving multiple rounds of teenage gladiatorial combat, inadvertently inciting an armed uprising, and becoming a media darling and symbol for revolt against a tyrannical dictatorship, Hunger Games heroine Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence, but you knew that) is tired of all the killing. But…
After a raid gone bad, FBI Agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt, on a hell of a winning streak) is detailed by a “consultant” (Josh Brolin), probably CIA, to ride shotgun on what’s supposed to be a trip to Phoenix but turns out to be…
After two Hunger Games films setting the stage for revolution in the future dystopia of PanEm, audiences are apparently finally ready for a third film setting up a feature-length climax evidently to be offered next year. In the fine tradition of modern studio-franchise moviemaking,…
The problem with Kick-Ass is that it has too much Kick-Ass in it. That statement could be read a couple of ways, all true. There’s a terrific story and a terrific film in this material—there’s probably several terrific films, truth be told—but for Matthew Vaughn’s…
Few genres lend themselves as well to a specific holiday as horror does to Halloween. Not every film of the genre directly connects with the holiday (though there’s about 90 Halloween sequels to compensate), but the vibe of Halloween night, the tradition of dressing up like so…
