There are moments in LUCKY STRIKE in which Scott Eastwood looks so much like Clint, it's like watching outtakes from "Where Eagles Dare". But this is no Eagles. Dull and boring, it strands the younger Eastwood in a survival story only occasionally lifted by the WW2 action around it. After a poorly acted opening war set sequence distinguished only by some decent drone photography, the film lumbers into its clumsy story framing device. We meet a post war US Army Captain John Ca

Revisiting THE GRADUATE after many years, it's easy to imagine the absolute nuke it delivered to mainstream audiences of the day. Director Mike Nichols (The Birdcage, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) shows little interest in traditional storytelling, reveling in long visual interludes to Simon & Garfunkel songs with no interest for momentum. Dustin Hoffman is the anti-leading man, fumbling his way sexually and wallowing in worry for his post college future. Characters pop in

Taylor Sheridan strikes gold again with season 2 of LANDMAN, a modern Western drama packed with great characters and superb actors that create nuanced, hilarious and dramatic people we care about, laugh with and love. The oil boomtowns of West Texas have never been this entertaining and Billy Bob Thornton's Tommy Norris is a character for the ages. The writing this sophomore season is off the charts great, with Sheridan penning every one of the ten episodes. This second year

Where goes the neighborhood.... There's a lot of fun to be had at THE END OF OAK STREET! With serious "Poltergeist" and "Gremlins" vibes, this one dropped me right back into the Spielberg produced classics of the early 80's. The most mainstream flick yet from crazy talented Writer/Director David Robert Mitchell, this one is an absolute blast loaded with fun, some serious surprises and powerful dramatic moments. But it's mostly just pure FUN. It's July 11th, 1982 and The Platt

Disney's HERCULES never reaches the heights of its creator's previous films, "Aladdin" and "The Little Mermaid", but it still serves up plenty of family fun, some great songs and one of James Woods' best roles. Grossing a quarter of a billion dollars back in 1997 is no small feat and the film retains a great following, even becoming a theatrical musical that's still playing (but about to close) on London's West End. Through music and animation, we learn that baby Hercules, th

In 1974, the same year as "The Godfather Part II", Paramount Pictures and producer Robert Evans released another modern classic and one of my all time favorites, CHINATOWN. Dripping with perfect sets, film noir detective work and one of Jerry Goldsmith's greatest music scores, it's complicated and rewarding. Featured in virtually every scene, Jack Nicholson stars as PI Jake Gittes. When he's hired by Evelyn Mullray to keep an eye on her husband, who she thinks is cheating on

Bloody, goofy and just plain dumb, THEY WILL KILL YOU wastes a great cast with a "Rosemary's Baby"/ wannabe Tarantino action mashup that manages to feel much longer than its 94 minutes. Zazie Beetz (Deadpool 2, Joker) is wasted as Asia Reeves, a young woman who takes a job at one of those giant NYC brownstones that seem to only exist on rain slicked Manhattan streets. Like "The Bramford" where Rosemary's pregnancy served up plenty of scares back in the day, The Virgil is a ma

When we meet Lord Doyle (Colin Farrell) in the opening scene of BALLAD OF A SMALL PLAYER, he's waking from a hell of a night in a suite at the Wynn Macau. Did he win a fortune or lose one? Only the amount of alcohol consumed and the disarray of the upscale room are certain. The TV blares, stacks of room service trays cover every table and it looks like Lord Doyle has been in the room awhile. Farrell dazzles in the opening sequence, carving out a mysterious character who's liv

One of the best Stephen King adaptions I've ever seen, THE LONG WALK is relentlessly dark, cruel and a prime example of a literary adaption that honors and expands the original work. Devotees of the novel may be upset at the changes from the text, KIng's first, but they serve the film well. Taking dystopian to its lowest lows, we are introduced to a smaller scale version of "The Hunger Games", long before that novel was ever published. King wrote THE LONG WALK way back in 196

I love a good shark movie. I'll usually swim out of my way to enjoy even a mildly enjoyable shark thriller. THE DEVIL'S MOUTH is absolute chum that bores, stinks and generates unintentional laughs in its ineptitude. So, where do I dive into this one? After opening with some beautiful shots of Thailand that made me really want to visit these beaches, we meet a group of early 20-somethings who are so self centered, obnoxious and dull that I couldn't wait to see who was going to