Imagine interviewing three different soldiers who all survived the same battle but experienced it from different vantage points, and asking them to tell their story. That’s the narrative feel to Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk,” a technical marvel of a war film with one simple aspiration: capture the feeling of helplessness in one of World War II’s […]

“John Wick” deservedly earned a cult following in 2014 because of the way director Chad Stahelski and writer Derek Kolstad blended revenge-driven action with martial arts and the aesthetics of both first-person shooter video games and graphic novels. They created this seedy, neon hit-man underworld and tapped perfectly into the strengths of star Keanu Reeves. […]

Who could have imagined that “The LEGO Batman Movie” would be the Batman movie we didn’t know we needed? At first glance, spinning off “The LEGO Movie” take on the popular superhero seemed more like a goofy – but separate – iteration of the Caped Crusader for the family audience. But if Warner Bros. decided […]

The big screen has experienced a burgeoning of “illness movies” in the last few years, and “The Big Sick” isn’t like any of them. Many of these films could be accused of leveraging illness for an emotional punch to the heart, but Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon’s story is not built around a character […]

No Marvel superhero has been through the ordeal of Spider-Man on the big screen. Peter Parker’s first two films practically launched the modern superhero genre, but then after creative issues, Sony rebooted him, and audiences were less than enthused. Probably with much reluctance, Sony and Marvel Studios reached terms on a co- production to let […]

A teenage girl wants nothing more than to remain with her lifelong pet and companion – the super pig Okja – in Korean auteur Bong Joon- ho’s latest film. Everything else is just stuff that gets in the way.

Horror tension, mystery tension and racial tension blend together into a gripping and formidable nail-biter in “Get Out,” the astonishing directorial debut of Jordan Peele. The former half of the comedy duo “Key & Peele” has found a way to both honor and subvert the thriller and horror genres in a way that’s unmistakably modern.

Few filmmakers have faced the scrutiny M. Night Shyamalan has endured in the nearly 20 years since “The Sixth Sense” became a global phenomenon and launched his memorable name into the spotlight. With each progressive film, it seemed Shyamalan drew more and more ire for his twist-focused approach to horror and by the late 2000s, […]

“The Founder” tells the story of McDonald’s Corporation founder Ray Kroc, the salesman and idea-chaser who turned two humble brothers’ speedy burger concept into the biggest restaurant chain in the world. But Kroc isn’t actually the most interesting part of his own movie.

DC Entertainment needed a superhero hit badly, and what better way to make a comeback than with a female heroine? Maybe “Wonder Woman” should be evaluated apart from its exciting feminist energy, but in a prolific superhero movie landscape, individuality matters, and the female star-director duo of Gal Gadot and Patty Jenkins is a large […]

At long last, a return to the world of “Harry Potter” — and a test to see what kind of legs “Potter”-themed but Potter-less stories might have on the big screen. Directed by franchise mainstay David Yates with a script by no less than J.K. Rowling herself, “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” has […]

Marvel Studios and writer/director James Gunn proved with 2014’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” that superhero movies don’t need to feature familiar (usually white, male, special suit-wearing) characters saving Earth; they just need to be fun, dynamic and easy to relate to. “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” doubles down on its investment in Peter Quill/Star-Lord […]

The Disney fairytale mold sets sail for Polynesia in “Moana,” the studio’s latest animated musical featuring a strong female lead character, and a film hoping to build off the success of “Frozen” and “Tangled.” Although audiences are unlikely to be as familiar with ancient Polynesian mythology as they were with the stories of Rapunzel or […]

If someone asked you to describe your country’s cuisine and what makes it uniquely of your country, you might be hard-pressed to provide an answer. Especially for Americans, if you’re country is made predominantly of immigrants and hasn’t been around for even 250 years, that’s a really tough question to answer. For Israel, a country […]

At the onset, it might seem insensitive to tell the story of a deadly mass shooting using rotoscope animation, but after you settle into the style of filmmaker Keith Maitland’s “Tower,” you realize how useful (and even powerful) a tool animation can be to tell a story that largely exists in fragments of witnesses’ memories.