Released in June of 1990 to the tune of $82 million at the box office, Days of Thunder is another high-octane action film from the unstoppable Simpson/Bruckheimer production team that dominated the 80’s and 90’s. Roger Ebert would call it the quintessential example of the “Tom Cruise Picture,” and he’s… Continue reading
To be good at something is one thing. To be good at something consistently for years is another. In a sport where getting a hit three times out of ten over a career makes you a borderline Hall-of-Famer, baseball requires an immense amount of discipline, repeatable mechanics, and the ability… Continue reading
Hitting theaters in May of 1995 and posting a very impressive box office total of $91.4 million on a $53 million budget, Crimson Tide was one of my very first truly suspenseful cinematic experiences. With a very engaging core moral dilemma combined acting clinics by Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman,… Continue reading
Draft Day takes on the challenging task of balancing the sports-nerd event that is the NFL draft with a story that the average, non-football fan can take in. The results are mixed, with the verbal battles between the general managers making for far better entertainment than the sappy and under-cooked… Continue reading
You know fun? Think the exact opposite of that and you’ll be in the right mindset for Sabotage, an exceedingly dreary and uninteresting revenge/whodunit that easily ranks as one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s worst films. Stripped of his larger-than-life persona and forced to play a grieving widower and leader of a… Continue reading
300: Rise of an Empire is pretty much the same lame video game as the first 300 film, but what this one has going for it is an occasional sense of a humor and a biting, entertainingly evil performance from Eva Green. She’s hands-down the best part of this monotonous,… Continue reading
Pompeii may have razor-thin characters and the least-convincing romance of the past few years, but one thing it is not is boring. As sort of a cross between Dante’s Peak, Gladiator, and Titanic, it blows up people and ancient architecture as efficiently as any disaster movie could. There are plenty of… Continue reading
“Damon, Murray, Blanchett, and Goodman are in? Well, then, our work here is done.” It seems more than likely that sentence or a variation thereof was uttered during the early stages of The Monuments Men, a dreary and largely uninteresting film about events that shouldn’t be dreary and uninteresting. A… Continue reading
If you like bizarre, confusing tonal shifts wrapped around a sloppy, never-believable-for-a-minute story, look no further than Labor Day. A Lifetime movie with good actors, the film represents the first true misstep of writer/director Jason Reitman’s (Juno) career. This is one strange film, with melodrama that doesn’t dig deep, uncomfortable,… Continue reading
A lean, old-school espionage thriller that never tries to be more than it is, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is a very pleasant surprise and possible franchise starter from director Kenneth Branagh. Based upon the character created by the late Tom Clancy (not based on any novel this time, just the… Continue reading