A 12-year-old boy is kidnapped from the local orphanage and embarks on a fantastical journey in the recklessly reimagined Pan. J.M. Barrie‘s beloved character Peter Pan returns for another in a long list of many remakes, reboots and reimaginings. To date, I’ve enjoyed none of them, including the iconic 1953 animated Disney film. I did love both 2004’s […]
An astronaut stranded on Mars tries to survive its hostile environment in the spellbinding sci-fi thriller The Martian. Botanist/scientist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is living out an incredible dream. He and his fellow shipmates are astronauts conducting a mission on the surface of Mars. An unexpected calamity forces the entire crew to rush back to […]
In the early days of IMAX, you had to go to a science museum or other specialized installation to see the large-format films. Many of these presentations were made inside domes or other structures rather than on traditional movie screens. Over two decades later, most major theaters have an IMAX screen. The early draws were […]
An unlikely team of international spies join forces to keep a shadowy criminal organization from acquiring a nuclear bomb in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. James Bond burst onto the big screen for the first time in 1962 with the release of Dr. No. Its success created a frenzy of new films and shows eager to […]
Some superhero movies in the ‘80s and ‘90s were really bad. The Punisher is my favorite comic book character, and 1989’s The Punisher tanked because it was both a bad movie and a bad adaptation of the comic. The quality of the films with Marvel characters really ramped up with Iron Man and carried forward […]
Love him or hate him for any reason, Tom Cruise remains an international movie star and box office draw. Some movie companies stake their budgets on these facts, and it doesn’t always work out. Over the past two decades, the Mission: Impossible franchise has featured some of Cruise’s best work in that time period. Characterized […]
In a summer that already debuted Avengers: Age of Ultron, we didn’t really need more superhero movies. If you look over the upcoming schedule of Marvel films, they are almost all designed and scheduled to be blockbusters. Imagine my surprise when I saw Ant-Man on a similar list a couple of years ago. Ant-Man?! I […]
It’s tough to think of Arnold Schwarzenegger and not immediately recall such classic lines as “I’ll be back” or “Hasta la vista, baby.” These two are from The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day respectively. Although there are lots of other things going on in both films, including buff badass Linda Hamilton, Schwarzenegger is the […]
In the ‘90s, there was a sitcom on Fox called Herman’s Head in which four actors portrayed the emotions at odds in lead character Herman’s brain. The show was funny and creative, and it lasted for three seasons. When I first heard about Inside Out, I immediately thought of Herman’s Head. If this animated Pixar […]
A young girl’s inner emotions struggle to cope with major change in Pixar‘s intriguing animated film Inside Out. 11-year-old Riley (voiced by Kaitlyn Dias) has lived a bit of a charmed existence up to this point in her young life. She’s popular with all of her friends, she’s a natural hockey player and she has two […]
Certain movie scenes stick with you forever. Some are iconic for everyone like the finales of Casablanca or Gone with the Wind, and others are more personal. One of those scenes for me is the T. rex attack on the jeep in Jurassic Park. I remember seeing it the first time in a packed theater. […]
A scientifically engineered dinosaur wreaks havoc on an unsuspecting theme park in Jurassic World. In 1993, director Steven Spielberg unleashed a monster of a film on a voracious populace. Jurassic Park boasted exceptional special effects, a creative story, several strong performances and some very memorable lines. Audiences couldn’t get enough. The fourth installment in Hollywood’s […]