A movie blog about what's going on in the film world by Jeff York, a writer, critic and fan.
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Jason Statham has proven himself a superb action hero for almost three decades in films like THE TRANSPORTER series, CRANK, and THE MECHANIC. He’s also shown a sense of comedy in most of those films and been outright hilarious in comedies like LOCK, STOCK & TWO SMOKING BARRELS and SNATCH. Statham even sent up […]
The best biopics focus on a short and specific time period in a famous person’s life, setting up a lesson or incident that will help shape the personality or the work they are known for. Such is the case with TONY, the new film about Anthony “Tony” Bourdain’s earliest brush with the restaurant business. In […]
The wildly successful Prime Video series REACHER is essentially a modern-day western. Jack Reacher is a stoic, lone hero who wanders into an unfamiliar town. He gets caught up in some trouble there and rights the wrongs. Then he leaves, moving on to the next town and his next adventure. It worked for John Wayne. […]
Filmmaker Eli Roth has always been a mixed bag for me. I found the body horrors utterly disturbing in his feature debut, CABIN FEVER, but recoiled from the numbing brutality of his HOSTEL films. I appreciated the nuance he brought to THE GREEN INFERNO, then scoffed at the one-note bluntness of his DEATH WISH remake. […]
Those who’ve interpreted Batman comics for the big or small screen have often twisted themselves into pretzels with a desire to reinvent the mythos. We’ve seen tongue-in-cheek parody (the 1966 live-action TV series), historical faction (Batman hunting Jack the Ripper in the 2018 animated GOTHAM BY GASLIGHT), and ideas as crazy as Batman costumes with […]
Does any other superhero have a motto like Spider-Man? As Peter Parker’s late, great Uncle Ben cautioned him, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Yep, being a superhero is a lot to carry; some would say it’s even a burden. Not every film in the Spider-Man film franchise has been a winner, but more often […]
Christopher Nolan’s films have long distinguished themselves through technical brilliance, grand ambition, and a fearless sense of scale. His command of image, sound, size, and setting remains formidable. Few contemporary filmmakers can match the precision with which he shoots, edits, scores, and composes visuals in his films. And yet his scripts can be brazenly revisionist. […]
Anya Taylor-Joy may be the closest thing we have today to one of the great silent film actresses who could hold the camera so demonstrably without ever speaking a word. Think about how little she said in her roles in THE WITCH, THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT, and FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA, and yet each was […]
Bryce Hirschberg would probably be well off just being an actor. He has an easy charm, looks good on camera, and holds it with his emotions too. But Hirsch is more ambitious than that. That’s why he not only acts in his films but also writes and directs them. In his latest, entitled JACKALOPE, he […]
For the second time in two months, Hollywood has opened an R-rated sex comedy that mostly skirts the issue of sex. First, THE INVITE took a snickering, almost junior high attitude towards infidelity, and now comes GAIL DAUGHTRY AND THE CELEBRITY SEX PASS. The latter chooses to be an out-and-out farce, vamping the oddities of […]
