The R-rated Hellboy is a comedically gory but otherwise not particularly funny reboot of the comic book character (previously brought to PG-13-rated life by Ron Perlman and director Guillermo del Toro), a red-skinned, horned demon with a giant fist who works with the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense to keep other monsters under control. […]

Here’s an amusing coincidence. Little, which is a reversal of the Tom Hanks classic Big, was written by Tina Gordon Chism, who also wrote What Men Want, a reversal of What Women Want. Chism’s niche, apparently, is mediocre rewrites of fantasy comedies where the premise is reversed and the main characters are black women. All […]

Missing Link is Laika’s fifth gorgeously detailed work of stop-motion animation and the fourth to leave me kind of cold. Only the studio’s debut, Coraline, had the intended impact; ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, and Kubo and the Two Strings were all wonderful to look at but offered no emotional connection. I feel bad not being moved by […]

The interesting thing about anti-abortion propaganda film Unplanned is how little it tries to persuade anyone of anything. Preaching to the choir, it presupposes that everyone already agrees abortion is murder and that no further discussion is necessary to prove it. It also assumes you believe that Planned Parenthood is evil, and doesn’t get around to […]

Hollywood continues to solve racism one bigot at a time with The Best of Enemies, a shiny, shallow trinket based on true events that, in the hands of first-time feel-good filmmaker Robin Bissell, seem made-up. It’s 1971 in Durham, N.C., where the schools are still segregated and C.P. Ellis (Sam Rockwell), head of the local […]

The title character in Hotel Mumbai is actually called the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, or the Taj for short, and it was one of a dozen Mumbai locations attacked by Islamic terrorists on November 26, 2008, ultimately killing 174 people and injuring hundreds more. The film, directed by first-timer Anthony Maras, follows the disaster-movie formula as […]

The whole point of Pet Sematary — both Stephen King’s 1983 novel and the effective 1989 movie version — is that you shouldn’t revive the dead because they won’t be the same when they come back. (It’s one of those universal, timeless messages.) So it’s a little on the nose that the new adaptation, directed […]

Despite their adventures ostensibly being aimed at kids, most superheroes aren’t children themselves. Except for the Spider-Men and occasional moments with the younger X-Persons, we rarely see a superhero revel in the sheer delight of having awesome powers. So part of what makes Shazam! a treat is that the hero is a 14-year-old boy, Billy […]