What distinguishes Deadpool from most other superheroes is that he swears, kills people, and breaks the fourth wall. That is also, of course, what distinguished the first Deadpool film from its dozens of siblings way back in 2016. Deadpool...

In 2008, 13-year-old Saoirse Ronan received her first Oscar nomination for Atonement, a British WWII melodrama based on an Ian McEwan novel about a fanciful girl named Briony Tallis who unwittingly unravels the lives of her sister Cecilia and...

Solo: A Star Wars Story opens in a few days, and everyone is supremely excited because making a prequel to Star Wars is a slam-dunk idea that can’t fail. Most fans are content to sit back and wait for the film to open, but true fans know that...

Deadpool came in like a comet in 2016, grossing $783.1 million worldwide — fantastic for any movie, but unheard of for a hard-R superhero movie. Audiences responded to Ryan Reynolds’ Bugs-Bunny-on-meth take on the character, and to the way...

In Avengers: Infinity War, Josh Brolin is big and purple. His Thanos is the film’s lynchpin and its main character almost by default. Although his quest -- to halve the world’s population with a bunch of magical MacGuffins -- is fairly...

This week's "good enough, I guess, if you're not too picky" home-invasion thriller is Breaking In,"which offers the innovative twist of the bad guys getting inside and holding the kids captive while the mom is locked outside and has to "break...

You'll think you've seen Life of the Party before, or at least something very much like it: A dowdy, newly divorced mom goes back to college to finish her degree -- and it's the same college her daughter is attending! Collision course with...

My brother and I like to bother each other and those around us with a game of soundtracks: When a deep, dark cut from a movie comes on the radio, one of us will turn to the other, smile like an executioner looking for a fresh neck, and ask: ...

This month marks the 10th anniversary of David Mamet’s mixed-martial-arts thriller Redbelt. In the intervening years, Mamet — the preeminent American playwright of his day, and one of the few screenwriters considered an auteur even when...

The rape-revenge sub-genre has many entries, and everything about Revenge (including the title) sounds derivative until you get to the credits. How many movies on this topic were written and directed by women? This one, a cool, synth-scored...

There are two premises in Bad Samaritan, one that drives the plot and one that explains the villain's motives. They are middling premises, better than some you've heard, less creative than others. They're executed with average skill by director...

Diablo Cody's screenwriting career started with a pregnant teenager named Juno. She returns to the subject of maternity with Tully, but there's a crucial difference this time: Cody has three kids of her own now, an experience that informs her...

Any remake of the 1987 Goldie Hawn/Kurt Russell "romantic" "comedy" Overboard would have to reverse the genders. A single father of three rowdy boys tricking a rich, mean amnesiac woman into believing she's his wife -- that is to say, cook,...

Some movies provide so much vivid detail about a character that you could practically write a biography. Lynne Ramsay's mesmerizing You Were Never Really Here (based on Jonathan Ames' novel) is a different sort of experience, immersing us in...

There are no literal hauntings in Ismael's Ghosts, a wry, lyrical, but often plodding drama from director Arnaud Desplechin (A Christmas Tale), only metaphorical ones. Freewheeling French filmmaker Ismael Vuillard (Mathieu Amalric), who shares...