With stunning brush strokes soaked in pathos and blood, "Logan" taps into a cask of comic book scotch that been reserved to reach maturity. This is, by a country mile, not only the best film of the “X-Men” franchise, but the best of 20th Century Fox’s entire catalog of Marvel Films. Presented as an analogy, “Logan” is to comic book films what “Unforgiven” was to westerns.
Read MoreChock full of more jokes, puns, and references than there are virtual plastic bricks, “The LEGO Batman Movie” is a breezy blast of unabashed fun. Twirling with dazzling animation and saturated with endless character possibilities, these two hours of zippy entertainment offer exhilarating playful engagement for young audiences and many absolute belly laughs for the adults. Like “The LEGO Movie” before it, the biggest flaw will always be the manic pace.
Read MoreCall me a softy or a sunny optimist, but I will take "The Space Between Us" over the next "Percy Jackson and the Hunger Maze Runner City of Bones Games with the 5th Wave of Divergent Mortal Instruments." The YA movie marketplace is overfilled with militarized kid-on-kid peril in the science fiction department. “The Space Between Us” is cheesy, corny, and pretends to be better than it really is, but, gosh darnit, the film has a charming and positive core that is hard to ignore.
Read MoreRenowned Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar seizes our attention and lights the fires of intrigue with human simplicity in “Julieta,” his 20th feature film and Spain’s entry this year for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award. Concocting a brew of passion coupled with remorse across personal history young and old, Almodovar unspools the tangled threads of a guilt-ridden woman’s heart. Adapted from three Alice Munro short stories, “Julieta” is a strong return to the female-focused storyscapes that have made him a legend.
Read MoreAll too often, the recent young adult wave of big studio dystopian fiction films contain three root faults. First, they shoot off preposterous peril for the sake of peril like a pyromaniac loose in a fireworks warehouse. Secondly, within the peril is the overused trope of militarizing teens and children. Finally, the screenwriters feel the need to over-explain every little thing about its created universe as if the audience can’t think for themselves or be challenged to draw an inference or two. For the most part, the small budget independent film “Go North” successfully and thankfully operates above those three traps.
Read MoreEvery influential man or woman had a formative period of their life where their impressionable knowledge coalesced into cemented principles that would guide them going forward. The outgoing 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, is no different. The new Netflix and VOD entry “Barry,” from director Vikram Gandhi, muses on the internal and external catalysts that shaped the then-20-year-old piece of unformed clay into the future leader of the free world.
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