• Allegiant

    What’s New: Weekend of March 18

    Three very diverse new films open on this third weekend of March, though I don’t expect any of them to be able to take down Zootopia. The “biggest” film opening this weekend is The Divergent Series: Allegiant, the third film in the YA franchise based on Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy. ...
  • Fantastic Four

    Fantastic Four

    There was no good reason to make the new Fantastic Four film. The first franchise, which starred Chris Evans and Jessica Alba, launched ten years ago — but quickly tanked after only the second film, due to disappointing box office and poor reviews. Now, eight years later, we have a ...
  • Chappie

    Capsule Reviews: March 2015 Wide Releases

    Chappie Inferior mash-up of RoboCop and A.I. set in a dystopian Johannesburg where robots act as the police force. When a programmer illegally reprograms one of them to be sentient, the robot is "raised" by a couple of wannabe-gangsters (Ninja and Yolandi Visser from the South African band Die Antwoord, ...
  • Birdman

    Capsule Reviews: Fall 2014 Releases

    American Sniper I'm torn on this one. My first instinct was to grade this slightly higher for what is a gripping, well-acted war movie that explores the toll relentless killing takes on a soldier. However, the politics of this thing make me uneasy. That the film offers an overly simplified, ...