Joel Edgerton writes, directs and stars in the creepy ‘The Gift’
I arrive for my interview with “The Gift” star/writer/director Joel Edgerton, and he hands me a full bottle of what he says is my own blood. “Remember waking up feeling...
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Red carpet report: ‘The End of the Tour’
This past January I was lucky enough to be on the red carpet before the Sundance premiere of “The End of the Tour,” which opens Friday in Chicago and stars...
‘Mission: Impossible–Rogue Nation’ does it again
How is Tom Cruise not dead? In the last "Mission: Impossible" movie, "Ghost Protocol," he glided along the exterior of the Burj Khalifa, which is approximately 700 jillion stories tall....
‘Samba’ is two different movies smashed together
"Samba" begins with Samba (Omar Sy of "Jurassic World") being detained in France, even though the Senegalese man has spent 10 years there, has a steady job and never received...
‘Vacation’ should be fun, not miserable
Good thing the National Lampoon label no longer exists or there surely would be yet another poo-related joke in the brandless reboot of 1983's "National Lampoon's Vacation," assumedly bringing the...
Bold predictions for Lolla 2015
The Lolla schedule is sort of like the NCAA tournament: There are millions of possible combinations, and it’s anyone’s guess what the winning picks will be. With that in mind,...
‘Unexpected’ has a few surprises
Is there anything new to be done in movies about unexpected pregnancy, which seem to come along as often as superheroes and sequels? (An exaggeration, of course, but you get...
‘Southpaw’ draws blood, then drops it
Boy, what a gentle storytelling technique to name your movie's main character, a boxer fighting for custody of his daughter and a return to the triumphant career he's lost, Billy...
‘Pixels’ is as Atari-ble as that joke
In a glorious, alternate world where no one has seen an Adam Sandler Movie (ASM)—at least, the recent ones that crystallized the ASM into a smug, hateful up-yours to viewers—citizens...
‘Paper Towns’ struggles to contain multitudes
"The teenage heart is an unguided dart," goes one song by Soak, an Irish singer-songwriter who herself is still a teenager. When that lyric is true, and it often is,...