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Spectacular Real-World Stunts Make 'Mission: Impossible - Fallout' A Blast
In the opening moments of the 2.5-hour Mission: Impossible — Fallout, producer/stuntman/star Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt shares a tender moment with Julia Meade-Hunt (Michelle Monaghan), the woman for whom...
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'The Spy Who Dumped Me': Man, They Could Have Done This Better
The most surprising thing about the action-comedy The Spy Who Dumped Me is that it racks up a higher body count in 117 minutes than the comparatively somber stunt spectacular Mission: Impossible —...
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Shark, Weak: Toothless 'The Meg' Snatches Mediocrity From The Jaws Of Defeat
Uneasy lies the wrist that wears the big diver's watch, but Jason Statham never looks especially perturbed in The Meg, an agreeably daft if disappointingly bloodless sea creature-feature from the...
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Muddled Action Thriller 'Mile 22' Should Have Pulled Off At Mile 3 Or So
After four consecutive movies together, director Peter Berg and star Mark Wahlberg want to make honest men of one another and turn their fruitful partnership into a proper franchise. The violent,...
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'Peppermint': A Revenge Thriller That's Neither Cool Nor Refreshing
There's an old Klingon proverb that says revenge is a dish best served in under 95 minutes, by a fondly regarded actor who's been out of the limelight for a while. With Taken, French...
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After A Promising Start, 'The Predator' Loses The Scent
You know a movie is lousy when its most ardent partisans — which in the case of Shane Black's new definite-article-attaching Predator sequel-not-reboot The Predator, are me, myself, and this guy right...
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Tom Hardy Gets His Teeth Into 'Venom,' Though The Film Lacks Bite
With great power comes great irresponsibility. It's been 29 summers since Prince's "Batdance" heralded the release of Tim Burton's Batman, and longer than that since a comic book screen spin-off...
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'Suspiria': A Cult-Horror Remake Dances To A Confusing Beat
Suspiria, Luca Guadagnino's reimagining of Dario Argento's gnarly Italian cult film about a haunted dance academy in Germany, is vulgar, shamelessly pretentious, and frequently opaque. But enough about...
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'Creed II' Isn't In The Same Weight Class As 'Creed,' But It's Got Heart
In 1985's Rocky IV, the most most high-and-tight entry in the formerly-shaggy Rockiad, an age-obsessed Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) laments to his opponent-turned-pal Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone)...
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Ricky Jay Remembered, From The Wings: An Assistant's Thoughts On The Late...
There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of people in the world who would've thrilled at the opportunity to spend time in the close orbit of Ricky Jay, the illusionist, writer, performer, playing...
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Well-Versed: 'Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse' Is A Fun, Warm-Hearted Treat
It's hard to fathom that the same Sony Pictures that, in 2012, decided the best way to expand the appeal of its live-action Spider-Man franchise was to start over with lesser movies, has now become...
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'Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse' Celebrates Inclusion
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'They Shall Not Grow Old': World War I Brought To Astonishing, Harrowing Life
In the closing moments of They Shall Not Grow Old, Peter Jackson's impressionistic documentary — no dates, no title cards, no omniscient narrator — about the foot soldier's experience of the sadly...
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'Serenity' Is All Wet. Literally.
Call it the M. Night Shyamalan problem: Should a film distinguished by howlingly tin-eared dialogue, emaciated characters and a plodding, easily guessed plot be pardoned its crimes when its maker...
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Gina Rodriguez Kicks Butt And Takes Nombres In 'Miss Bala'
Liam Neeson is 66 years old, but someday he will be dead, and reluctant-hero midwinter action flicks will need a new standard-bearer. Miss Bala— director Catherine Hardwicke's efficient PG-13 remake of...
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Teenage Wasteland: 'Alita: Battle Angel' Doesn't Quite Earn Its Wings
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, James Cameron worked for Roger Corman, the king of fast-and-cheap exploitation moviemaking. But in the flaming nightmare dystopia of A.D. 2019 Los Angeles, he...
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'Dumbo': Elephants Never Forget, But Audiences Will
Dumbo, the first of three live-action(ish) remakes of beloved Disney cartoons due in the next four months (Aladdin is coming in May, The Lion King in June), coulda been a contender. Its director is Tim...
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'Hellboy': Hell, No
Hellboy, despite its colon-free title, is actually the fifth movie starring the good-guy demon hero (if you count the two animated films that featured the same cast as the live-action films made by...
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Blockbuster Films Keep Getting Longer; How And Why Did We Get Here?
"No amount of money ever bought a second of time," says Tony "Iron Man" Stark, patient zero of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, midway through the new Avengers: Endgame.As has frequently been the case in...
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There Is No Spoon, But There's Plenty of Knives In 'John Wick: Chapter 3 -...
The John Wick movies are what you might call coffee-table action films, the kind where a lot of dudes (and ladies, and gender-nonconforming individuals) get thrown through expensive-looking coffee...
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You Won't Get Much Fire From 'Godzilla: King Of The Monsters'
Godzilla, that tall, irradiated, irritable frenemy of humankind, has starred in more films over the last 60 years than James Bond. The latest, subtitled King of the Monsters, is a sequel to 2014's...
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In 'Shaft,' The Sex Machine Grinds Its Gears
To clear up any potential confusion, let's specify right here that the new action comedy Shaft is a sequel to, not a remake of, John Singleton's 2000 film Shaft. Which was a sequel to, not a remake of,...
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'Spider-Man: Far From Home,' But Still On Familiar Ground
For as good as it is, there's just no way to receive Spider-Man: Far From Home as anything more than a vestigial tale, as it were, on the Marvel saga. It's an earnest, well-performed, lovably shaggy...
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Collateral, Damaged: 'Stuber' Is A Tired Retread
In Michael Mann's surprisingly funny 2004 thriller Collateral, assassin Tom Cruise takes meek taxi driver Jamie Foxx hostage, forcing him to spend a terrifying night ferrying the hitman around Los...
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Tarantino's Turned-On, Tuned-In Tinseltown: 'Once Upon A Time In ... Hollywood'
Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino's florid, sun-bleached, la-la land fantasia, would be a groovy trip of a movie in any era. But only now, with virtually the entire industry consumed...
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Better Stunts & Actors, Just As Derivative: 'Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs &...
While we were all arguing whether Idris Elba should be the new 007, he opted to become the next T-800 instead. In Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, the most agreeable of the innumerable...
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Mawkish 'Blinded By The Light' Wears Its Too-Hungry Heart On Its Sleeve
"Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?" That's a line from the title track of Bruce Springsteen's 1980 album The River, one of several Boss-tic Gospels quoted more than once...
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'Ad Astra' Soars
With its austere surfaces and jaundiced view of humanity's interplanetary destiny, James Gray's stirring sci-fi epic Ad Astra can't help but evoke Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, the...
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A Breezy Look At The Making Of A Blaxploitation Classic: 'Dolemite Is My Name'
Note: This film is now in limited theatrical release before debuting on Netflix on Friday, October 25th. Eddie Murphy, who had name-above-title billing in a hit movie at 21, was one of the biggest...
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'Zombieland: Double Tap' Taps Into Nostalgia For Its Predecessor
Had you told me even a month ago that Academy Award-nominee Jesse Eisenberg, Academy Award-nominee Abigail Breslin, three-time Academy Award-nominee Woody Harrelson, and three-time Academy...
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Springsteen Concert Film 'Western Stars' Sheds No New Light
Newly-minted septuagenarian Bruce Springsteen has been firmly in legacy mode ever since he took that long knee-slide across the stage at the Super Bowl XLIII halftime show a decade ago. To hear him...
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In 'Terminator: Dark Fate,' A Faltering Franchise Gets A Hard Reset
James Cameron wrote and directed The Terminator for love. He made Terminator 2: Judgment Day for money. On his prior film, the Close-Encounters-of-the-Wet-Kind adventure The Abyss, the polymath who'd...
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A Middling 'Midway'
The 1942 victory the U.S. Navy won against a numerically superior Japanese force at Midway Atoll was fresher in memory to the audiences that made the Technicolor-Sensurround sensation Midway a hit in...
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Sneer Campaign: 'Richard Jewell'
There's no post-credits scene at the end of director Clint Eastwood's Richard Jewell, a good-acting, bad-faith dramatization of the plight of a wrongfully accused security guard at the 1996 Olympic...
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Why Are There No New Christmas Songs?
This year, Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" turns 25. Her single-item wish list seems to have been the punctuation mark on half a century in which a new, original and secular holiday...
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'1917' Is Gripping, Visceral And Strangely Beautiful
World War I was a low-tech / high-tech conflict, "advancing" over four grinding years from horse-drawn carts and bayonets to slaughter via airplane, tank, machine gun, and poison gas. Sam Mendes's 1917...
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A Drug Kingpin Worries Over His Imminent Regicide In 'The Gentlemen'
The genie is out of the bottle. The motormouthed magician of whom I speak is Guy Ritchie. The Gentlemen finds the unlikely director of Aladdin v.2019 released from Disneyland to return to his...
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'First Cow': A Profound, Ruminative Western
First Cow, writer-director Kelly Reichardt's seventh feature and her fifth collaboration with novelist/screenwriter John Raymond, is as rich and melancholy an expression of the themes that have defined...
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In The Derivative Action Flick 'Bloodshot,' Diesel Delivers Low-Octane Thrills
Vin Diesel coulda been a contender. In his small role in 1998's Saving Private Ryan, and in his vocal performance as the title character in Brad Bird's lovely cartoon The Iron Giant the following year,...
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What's Making Us Happy: A Guide For Your Weekend Watching, Listening And...
Summer is well underway now, with big movies — such as Black Widow -- opening, summer songs blasting out of car windows, and books accompanying vacationers to beaches. We're listening, watching,...
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What's Making Us Happy: A Guide For Your Weekend Watching, Listening And...
The second week of the Olympics had us watching horses and swimmers and runners, and we wouldn't trade them for anything. But as we head into the final weekend of all that, we've got plenty of other...
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Daniel Craig is the bookend Bond, giving 007's story a beginning — and an end
James Bond Will Return, as a title card at the end of each of the 25 EON Productions Bond films released since the Kennedy Administration has promised. Daniel Craig will not.The new — well, newish — No...
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What's making us happy: A guide for your weekend watching, listening and...
This week was the one when Squid Game kept tearing up the internet. It was the week when Oscar predictions started appearing in more places. And it was the week when we learned there would be more...
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What's Making Us Happy: A Guide For Your Weekend Watching, Listening And...
This week, Big Bird got vaccinated, Netflix dropped the new season of Gentefied, and McDonalds announced a Mariah Carey-themed menu for the holidays. Here's what NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour crew was...
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What's making us happy: A guide to your weekend reading, listening and viewing
Updated August 5, 2022 at 5:44 PM ETThis week, we learned more about what color dinosaurs were, Batgirl got the axe, and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was honored with her own...
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What's making us happy: A guide to your weekend listening and viewing
This week, we discovered our purpose using stick figures, ways to help save the beloved box turtle, and that Drake has yet to perform a Tiny Desk.Here's what the NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour crew was...
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What's making us happy: A guide to your weekend listening.
This week, we rented potted Christmas trees, witnessed a spectacular meteor shower, and listened to SZA's new album SOS on repeat. Here's what the NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour crew was paying attention...
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What's making us happy: A guide to your weekend viewing
This week, we watched The Golden Globes attempt to make a comeback, learned how to look at art from a new perspective, and got spooked by a fictional high-tech doll who can kill.Here's what the NPR's...
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What's Making Us Happy: A guide to your weekend reading, viewing and listening
This week we listened to some Kelly Clarkson, solved someRubik's cubes, and stayed up 'till midnight. Here's what the NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour crew was paying attention to — and what you should...
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What's Making Us Happy: A guide to your weekend viewing and listening
This week we read some thrillers, spun the Wheel of Fortuneand chatted with a gal named Bob. Here's what the NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour crew was paying attention to — and what you should check out...
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