— by BEV QUESTAD — Sometimes my high school students ask, “What is evil?” Is it a lack of social conscience or a desire to harm others? Is evil behavior a brain malfunction or mental disorder? Is evil itself an invasion of the devil or a regression to bloodthirsty animalistic surviva[...]
Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Review: After Earth
— by ADAM DALE — Infamous director M. Night Shyamalan is returning to theaters with “After Earth,” a sci-fi adventure that fits into his known repertoire, but with his credibility to make good movies on the decline for the past decade was it wise for the studios to trust him with suc[...]
Review: Now You See Me
— by ADAM DALE — If there is one form of entertainment that really needs to be seen in person to get the full effect, I would say that it would have to be magic shows. If you see it on television, where it was prerecorded, then your first instinct is to think that what […][...]
Review: The English Teacher
— by RON WILKINSON — Julianne Moore plays Linda Sinclair, a high school English teacher in the small town of Kingston, Pa., who is almost believable as the town spinster (she has a problem with uncontrollable sexiness). Unmarried and seeking refuge in her job, her apartment and her two c[...]
Review: Shadow Dancer
— by RON WILKINSON — It is 1993 in Belfast and the Irish Republican Army has not yet been brought to the table. Although voices within the movement are calling for peace, the hardliners hang on, and they hang on hard. They have been forged into the most ruthless fighting force in the wor[...]
Review: Fast & Furious 6
— by ADAM DALE — Not many action franchises can tout an impressive six films over 12 years as “The Fast and Furious” can. While every entry in the franchise might not have been a highlight — and some even fell short of being decent movies — this franchise has made many of[...]
Review: Star Trek Into Darkness
— by ADAM DALE — It has been four years since J.J. Abrams “Star Trek” debuted and the eventual sequel to the hit has finally landed in theaters. “Star Trek Into Darkness” is using the same hit formula that worked for the franchise’s reboot, as well as adding a multitude of new [...]
Review: Deceptive Practice
— by BEV QUESTAD — A stocky man tears up a piece of paper into tiny little pieces that flake to the ground. Then a little white butterfly flutters out of his hand. He picks up a slick deck of cards and fans them out in patterns. After shuffling a half dozen times he picks […][...]
Review: Iron Man 3
— by ADAM DALE — Just as Marvel’s “The Avengers” was the culmination of a long and very thought-out process in Marvel’s Phase One, “Iron Man 3” is the effort of a lot of hard work over the past six or seven years, starting with the casting of Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. [...]
Review: Louder Than a Bomb
— by BEV QUESTAD — If high schools put the same insane competitive energy they put into basketball and football into … well, let’s say poetry, what would it look like? You’d have tryouts to even get on the team. There would be determined coaches, individual drills and after-school [...]
Oblivion: Review
— by ADAM DALE — If I were to describe the plot to Joseph Kosinski’s “Oblivion” and leave off character names and specific details of the story and its twists, you could easily name four or five of the biggest sci-fi genre films of all time that it sounded like. This is the biggest[...]
Review: Drawing Dead
— by BEV QUESTAD — The sun is shining and a man is shown walking along an isolated road (where are those?) bordered by tall, thick grass with two dogs tramping at his side. He is pulling a cart and stops, pulls out his violin and masterfully creates an ambiance of light-hearted bliss[...]
Review: Trance
— by ADAM DALE — A mixture of “A Beautiful Mind,” “Inception” and “What Dreams May Come” is what Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle (“Slumdog Millionaire,” “Trainspotting,” “127 Hours”) seems to be going for in his new dramatic crime thriller “Trance.” This ne[...]