Sarah Polley has been working consistently in film and television since she was a child, and what's most astounding about the multi-hyphenate filmmaker, who spends her days smoothly segueing back-and-forth between actor, writer, and director, is how much enthusiasm she continues to have for the industry as she seeks out new, innovative ways of...

Read my review of 2009's Star Trek here

2009's hugely successful sequel/prequel/reboot Star Trek did a lot more than apply the paddles to the moribund Trek brand after a brief, apathy-induced interregnum. It also opened the franchise up to a wider, more diverse audience than it ever...

After four wildly different tries at bringing F. Scott Fitzgerald's much-admired tome The Great Gatsby to the silver screen, I'm starting to think it may simply be unadaptable. Maybe the acknowledgement of such will keep hubristic filmmakers like Baz Luhrmann from dusting off the text every few decades to try,...

Read my 2008 review of Iron Man here

Read my 2010 review of Iron Man 2 here

Read my 2012 review of The Avengers here

I have to admit, as a fan of the comic book incarnation of Iron Man going all the way back to...

42 is an exceptional story told unexceptionally. As a depiction of the trailblazing story of Jackie Robinson, who shattered the color barrier for professional baseball (and really for all pro sports), its subject matter is worthier than its execution. Then again, that's not necessarily a fault of the movie, per...

When director Steven Spielberg's dinos-on-the-rampage blockbuster Jurassic Park first hit the screen twenty years ago (I'll let you process that number for a second, along with the resultant reality of how much older you are since you first saw it) it was a legitimate phenomenon. A true game changer. To everyone but...

Larry Hama began his long tour chronicling G.I. Joe in 1982 while working as an editor at Marvel Comics, when he took on the little "toy book" that no one else wanted to write. From there, he helped shape every aspect of the extended Joe universe, down to penning...

Read my 2009 review of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra here

Now that's more like it.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation is the Joe movie I've been hoping to see since I was a little kid, and it's exactly the kind of movie that its predecessor, 2009's exercise in cotton candy excess...

Ever since his breakout performance in 2007's Across the Universe, actor-musician Jim Sturgess has leveraged his reputation as one of Hollywood's rising stars to seek out unique, interesting projects that represent unique, interesting artistic visions.

His latest film, the dreamlike modern day fairytale Upside Down, which opened yesterday in...

The last time director Sam Raimi, one of the most talented visual voices of his generation, tried his hand at a big budget blockbuster, this happened. And so, with the unfortunate, unplanned end of his post-facto Spider-Man trilogy proving an unsatisfactory experience both for him to make and the...

It's now twenty-five years since a shoeless, shirtless Bruce Willis, as beleagured NY cop John McClane, uttered his first "Yippee-ki-yay" while taking down hordes of heavily-armed baddies in director John McTiernan's Die Hard. I doubt the filmmakers had any inkling at the time, but that thriller (which launched Willis' big...

The Academy Awards are this coming weekend, and based on its mad march through the rest of the award shows this season, it sure looks like Argo is well positioned to take the Best Picture prize even as its helmer, the resurgent Ben Affleck was perplexingly robbed of a...