It’s impossible to surmise what J. R. R. Tolkien’s shade might think about the latest big screen adaptation of his fantasy corpus set in a fictional Middle Earth of elves, hobbits, orcs, and rings of power. But New Zealand director Peter Jackson’s latest cinematic tour de force, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, is undeniably a very different story than its simple, warm-hearted literary source material.
Saving Mr. Banks is a whimsical film chronicling the production of the highly acclaimed Disney movie Mary Poppins. It tells the true life story of Walt Disney and the efforts he made to convince the author of the popular Mary Poppins books to give him the movie rights. Overall, it is a heartwarming film that is likely to be enjoyed by most audiences, particularly those who adore Mary Poppins.
High-quality science fiction/action film Catching Fire burned up the box office in its opening weekend, and — unusually for a sci-fi film — drew a majority female audience. The movie grossed an estimated $161.1 million in North America and $307.7 million globally in its first weekend.
National Geographic Channel's docudrama Killing Kennedy presents a dual timeline — one depicting the presidency of John Kennedy and a parallel dramatization about the life of Lee Harvey Oswald, who, the Warren Commission concluded, killed the president.
The Fifth Estate is more like a documentary — without the context or the strict adherence to documentable facts — than it is an dramatization. It's not a bad film, even though it straddles the two worlds without fully embracing either genre.
More...
Captain Phillips is a well-made drama about the real-life events that played themselves out on global television back in April of 2009. The audience already knows the outline of what happened before walking into the theater.
The chilling new film Gravity grips the audience immediately with a nightmarish scenario high above the Earth, where astronauts Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) are stranded. The powerful and tense plot and unique visual features rivet the audience as they empathize with the two astronauts in what appears to be an almost hopeless situation.
It's about maintaining one’s composure and finding one’s faith when very little hope appears to exist.
When Apple founder Steve Jobs passed away nearly two years ago, it seemed inevitable that a film honoring the technological and business genius would come out of Hollywood. Jobs, starring Ashton Kutcher as the young Steve Jobs, proves to be an interesting film with some positive elements including a pro-capitalist perspective.
Elysium is a campy, dystopian film by writer/director Neill Blomkamp (District 9), starring Academy Award winners Matt Damon and Jodie Foster.
The highly anticipated sequel to Despicable Me hit theaters on July 3 treating audiences to another hilarious and family-friendly film. Ripe with the same loveable characters from the original, Despicable Me 2 proves to be a wonderful film for the family.
Movie Review: Copperhead
Written by Steve Byas
What happened when a Northerner vociferously protested against war with the South? This movie by the director of Gods and Generals and Gettysburg answers that question.