I love rewatching my favorite movies. When you sit down to view any film, you approach it with your own experience and meet it in the middle. Then, over time, you change and your viewpoints change and you can derive and add new meaning by rewatching something that, unless George Lucas was involved,...

It’s easy to criticize Hollywood decision-makers for how often they take the easy way out, whether it’s putting white Englishmen in their ancient Egyptian epics or overloading films with men and including one woman. But where they often get a litany of passes is the casting of able-bodied...

In a way, the most important relationship in Beatriz at Dinner is the one between the title character and someone who only appears in a handful of photographs. Played by a noticeably deglamorized Salma Hayek — for whom the role was tailor-made by director Miguel Arteta and writer Mike White —...

Some superhero movies have subtitles referring to the dramatic events or villains featured therein: Apocalypse, The Age of Ultron, Civil War, The Last Stand. Then there's Spider-Man: Homecoming, which refers to a dance at Peter Parker's high school. Yes, the new incarnation of the web-slinger is a...

When Edgar Wright premiered his new film, Baby Driver, earlier this year at SXSW, critics and viewers were quick to compare it to La La Land. Both films centered around the budding romance between a soulful, brooding would-be musician and a peppy, dreamy coffee shop waitress; both were set to music...

When Clint Eastwood starred in the 1971 Don Siegel drama The Beguiled, it was in the hopes of pushing his image beyond the spaghetti Western antihero or misplaced musical star (yes, we remember Paint Your Wagon). The Beguiled gave Eastwood the opportunity to play a romantic lead, and much of the...

At face value, 1981’s Neighbors is The Blues Brothers Take Suburbia. The yellowed cover of my VHS copy calls it “A Comic Smash” and promises “Belushi and Aykroyd are at it again and the results are uproarious!” without a hint of attribution, making both statements about as legally binding...

Admittedly, Baby Driver employs a gimmick. Written and directed by the impossibly clever Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), the film's main character is a getaway driver who times his crew's bank robberies to be in sync with his iPod, which has an eclectic playlist of pop/rock...

Joe Dante knew he’d made it in Hollywood when a grip on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) pointed out which corner of the soundstage Errol Flynn once used as his own personal bathroom. His career has always walked that same line between profound and profane. Dante got his start as one...

A few weeks back, film critics and pop-culture writers were all in a tizzy over a troubling report that the new Transformers had a running time of 182 minutes. This was swiftly debunked — by no less an authority than director Michael Bay, who took to Twitter to declare it was “shorter than the...

One of the most anticipated films in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival was Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled. The Civil War period piece — which centers on the drama caused by the appearance of a wounded Union soldier at a secluded girls’ school deep in Confederate territory —...

The time of year has come when we dutiful Americans shove our families into tightly packed cars and head off to giant, overpriced amusement parks! Crying children in the back, sleeping spouse in the passenger seat, and a strong urge to drive headlong into an eighteen wheeler if only to save...

As the world teeters on the brink of Transformers: The Last Knight, Craig J. Clark has finally reached the end of the road that led Michael Bay — and the rest of us — here. Craig called the tune. It’s time to pay the piper. Part IV: Gains and Losses (2013-2016) After directing three...

Pixar's first bad movie, Cars 2, erred in making Mater the tow truck the main character and in emphasizing a tired espionage caper over jokes. Pixar's second bad movie, Cars 3, fixes those mistakes and replaces them with different ones. This time, the accursed Mater is hardly around at all (and...

This week marks the 30th anniversary of John McTiernan’s action/sci-fi blockbuster Predator. It was the first credited movie role for the actor who plays the dirty-joke-obsessed Hawkins, but his excitement about that may have been overshadowed by something else. His name is Shane Black, you see,...