Did Peter Jackson really just conclude his second Middle Earth trilogy? His take on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” was a completely exhausting adventure that in many ways feels like seven films, not three, while “The Hobbit” trilogy feels exactly like it is on paper: one straightforward adventure broken into three parts. “The […]

Washed up celebrities, surrealism, truth and the theatre converge into an extraordinary film from Alejandro González Iñárritu (“Amores Perros,” “21 Grams”), a master of weaving multiple story lines together tackling dark but powerful themes about human nature and love. “Birdman” does not veer from these themes, but it is a dramatic structural shift for Iñárritu; […]

“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1” takes a drastic turn from the previous two entries of North America’s biggest active movie franchise, but any fan of Suzanne Collins’ trilogy could tell you that was coming; what doesn’t change is the series’ devotion to character-driven drama. In fact, it takes center stage.

“Foxcatcher” is anything but a wrestling drama. Although based on the true story of Olympic gold medalist Mark Schultz and his brief years of training under multi-millionaire John du Pont, “Foxcatcher” expands well beyond the wrestling ring into the minds of two men longing to find greatness.

If Christopher Nolan wasn’t already the most daring filmmaker of the 21st century, “Interstellar” seals the deal. Somehow, the “Dark Knight Trilogy” and “Inception” director manages to package theoretical physics, space-time travel and a doomsday scenario all in one film that even when it doesn’t make sense, still strikes several nerves both in terms of […]

Directors don’t become synonymous with genres as often as they used to in Hollywood’s Golden Age, but play the word association game with “David Fincher” and you’re bound to hear “thriller” come up. There’s little doubt that if you’re producing an intense, dark, mystery-driven film, Fincher’s your first choice, and he proves it yet again […]

Young adult sci-fi adaptations have run rampant since “The Hunger Games,” and “The Maze Runner” is the latest attempt to copy that model and hook the same audience. James Dashner’s tale of young boys trapped in a glade surrounded by a giant maze is much simpler than “Hunger Games,” so while it can’t achieve anywhere […]

Calling “Boyhood” “unlike anything you’ve ever seen” is stating the obvious, yet there is almost no other way to describe it in as many words. Making a film over the course of 12 years with the same cast, Richard Linklater has transformed everything we know about filmmaking, in some ways challenging the very definition of […]

Zach Braff is the kind of guy who should be making films more often than every 10 years. “Garden State” put the very notion of “finding yourself” indie films on the map, at least for a certain generation. “Wish I Was Here” comes one too many of those films later to have the same kind […]

After years of success bringing earthbound superheroes to the big screen, Marvel Studios opened eyes when it first endeavored to make a film out of “Guardians of the Galaxy.” If Iron Man was once considered an obscure Marvel hero, these guys were total D-league. Yet surprising to no one, the studio’s creative process has yielded […]

Four years ago you never could’ve predicted that “Planet of the Apes” would be rebooted to critical and financial acclaim, let alone become perhaps the most promising franchises born after 2010. If “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” (read the review) was a consummate origin story, then “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” […]

The mystery of making a great comedy sequel has been solved. The catch? Now that it’s been done, it can never be done again.

Imagine Bill Murray’s suicide scenes from “Groundhog Day” as a futuristic science-fiction movie and you (sorta) have the groundwork for “Edge of Tomorrow.” High (yet familiar) in concept, “Tomorrow” puts a needed twist on alien invasion films, succeeding by telling a story much narrower in scope yet still big in terms of storytelling stakes.

After a foray into the blockbuster world, filmmaker Jon Favreau has settled back into his bread and butter (a bit literally), independent comedy. “Chef” is a feel-good movie that goes down easy, especially for any self-described “foodies” in the audience.

In a post-“Avengers” comic book movie universe, bigger is not only better, but also necessary. Leave it to original “X-Men” and “X2” director Bryan Singer to get the whole gang together (old and new) in order to bring one of the biggest “X-Men” story lines to the big screen in attention-grabbing fashion. “X-Men: Days of […]