Movie Reviews: Last News

that movie at Christmas. Running time: 110 minutes. Rated TV-MA.

the ‘Barbie’ movie after last night’s star-studded Los Angeles premiere.The initial chatter is filled with praise for the Greta Gerwig-directed flick, which stars Margot Robbie, 33, as Barbie and Ryan Gosling, 42, as Ken. More than one critic even went as far as to say that Gosling deserves an Oscar for his role in the hotly-anticipated film, which hits theaters July 21. “Barbie caught me off guard & I mean that in the best way possible,” one critic proclaimed on social media. “It’s funny, bombastic, & very smart.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” have a lot in common.Both are part of decades-old American franchises that have been led by the same stars from Day 1 — Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford. Both concern a mysterious object that’s been split in two and needs to be recovered before it falls into the wrong hands. And both feature an extended action chase aboard a moving train.Running time: 163 minutes.

off-its-rocker “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, which had Indy survive a nuclear explosion by hiding inside a refrigerator — and ended with a Spielbergian alien encounter.Running time: 154 minutes. Rated PG-13 (sequences of violence and action, language and smoking.) In theaters June 30.Of course, we always feel happy seeing Harrison Ford — the greatest American action star ever — back in the iconic fedora, even at 80 years old.And Phoebe Waller-Bridge of “Fleabag” adds a welcome dose of spit and vinegar as Helena Shaw, Jones’ goddaughter and latest co-adventurer. But I still left asking “Why?” Everybody knows the Indy series should’ve called it quits with 1989’s “The Last Crusade,” after Indiana Jones and his dad, Dr.

the struggling animation studio has picked their most rudimentary characters ever — fire and water. Far from the ingeniously realized robot in “Wall-E” or the scrappy rodent chef of “Ratatouille,” here simple flames gab, droplets ride the subway and blades of grass work office jobs. Fire riding a bicycle — really? The movie walks a fine line between clever adventure and Pixar self-parody.Running time: 103 minutes.

Ezra Miller’s erratic behavior that landed the star in court in Hawaii and Vermont in 2022, to the Warner Bros. shakeup in October 2022 that led to James Gunn and Peter Safran taking over the limping DC Studios.Running time: 144 minutes.

2018’s surprising “Bumblebee” gave us some hope that the series still had some gas in the tank. Running time: 127 minutes. Rated PG-13 (intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, and language.) In theaters.Wrong! The fuel gauge is at “E” — for excruciating.

surprise hit “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” not only lives up to its genre-enlivening and Oscar-winning predecessor — it often surpasses it in terms of animated excellence. A complex mix of ecstasy and frustration bubbled up when I realized that the first five minutes of this flick are more jolting and creative than any of the last ten Marvel movies. Easy.Running time: 140 minutes.

professional mermaid.Bailey first rose to fame and internet acclaim as half of Chloe X Halle, the singing group she formed in her parent’s living room with older sister Chloë. The self-taught duo’s staggering renditions of Beyoncé classics like “Best Thing I Never Had,” garnered the attention of Queen Bey herself who eventually signed the sisters to her Parkwood Entertainment record label.

Director Ric Roman Waugh’s drab film fumbles and grumbles through Iran, the United Arab Emirates and eventually Afghanistan as the hunt for CIA Agent Tom Harris (Butler) intensifies. “Kandahar,” to its credit, aspires to be deep. Geopolitics come up, as does the Taliban’s mangled interpretation of the Quran, along with ISIS and other aftershocks of American wars in the Middle East.Really, though, it is just another tiresome and impenetrably brooding Gerard Butler movie in which no event seems to matter any more than the next one — and grimaces are mistaken for drama. Before ho-hum Harris goes on the run, he is posing as a utility worker in Iran while attempting to destroy a nuclear plant.

latest flesh-and-blood cash grab that’s more lifeless than far better two-dimensional painted drawings.The magic and soul of the studio’s animated classics never, ever translate to this colder, realistic context, and still they keep churning them out.   Why learn their lesson? “The Lion King” and “Beauty and the Beast” both grossed over $1 billion. The movies don’t need to be high-quality because the titles and logos do the heavy-lifting for them. While director Rob Marshall (“Chicago”) and writer David Magee make enough prudent changes to ensure their musical film functions efficiently, many alterations seem to exist only to achieve a bloated two-hour runtime or to wedge Lin-Manuel Miranda’s name into the end credits.For instance, when a smitten Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) takes speechless Ariel (Halle Bailey) around his island kingdom, the Caribbean carriage ride is more of the “Gilligan’s Island” length — a three-hour tour.  That’s one of many middling efforts to deepen the prince’s character from just a smile on legs.

Twenty-two years ago, the “Fast & Furious” franchise began as a sexy crime-and-cars saga set in LA. Ten movies later (not counting spinoffs), the meathead stars of these vacuous slogs look and behave like a group of retired gym teachers who’d be better off behind the wheel of a golf cart.Running time: 141 minutes. Rated PG-13 (intense sequences of violence and action, language and some suggestive material.) In theaters May 19.“The real question,” astutely asks one of the interchangeable doofuses in “Fast X,” “is how did we let this go on so long?” But let it, they did, and now we’re buckling up for another moronic “Fast” film that plods along like “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” and features increasingly fake chases.

It’s the 32nd Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, which means we’ve reached the point where they’re telling us the weepy origin story of a talking raccoon.Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper) is the order of the day in “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” the final entry in the trilogy, in which the furry wiseguy is nearly killed and his co-heroes must chase down the assailant within 48 hours to save his little life.Running time: 150 minutes.

It’s “Mommie Dearest” gone wild.In the first scene, though, we’re back in one of those creepy, secluded cottages that made the 1981 film a classic. Out in the woods, a girl-turned-“Deadite” kills her two friends before an on-screen message reads: “One day earlier.” The location shifts to the soon-to-be-demolished city apartment building of Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland), a mother of three kids who recently separated from her husband. The night her sister Beth (Lily Sullivan), a rebellious concert roadie, comes to visit, an earthquake opens a hole in their parking garage concealing our old friend the Book of the Dead and some vinyl recordings of spooky incantations.Teenage Danny (Morgan Davies) decides to pop them on his turntable and, you know, accidentally destroys his family, including sisters Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) and Kassie (Nell Fisher).Demons are unleashed, one enters Ellie’s body and then Mother Monster brutally goes after Beth and the kids. I vastly prefer the “Evil Dead” series to, say, never-ending “Scream” because unlike with Ghostface, no elaborate narrative excuse needs to be drummed up for why ancient evil spirits are still slumming it on earth.

Matthew McConaughey smoking a joint in Guy Ritchie’s new movie “The Covenant.” The prolific British director has, for the moment, left behind quirky crime and comedy for his Afghanistan War film — and it’s not hard to understand why. The story the movie is based on is a harrowing and special one. A US Army sergeant and an Afghan interpreter are on the run from the Taliban, when the American is knocked unconscious and his companion must go to extraordinary lengths to save him.Running time: 125 minutes.

Como se dice, “What the hell?”The priest, whose beard is mysteriously much whiter than his hair, is sent to the abbey by the pope — “Charlie’s Angels” style. The building was recently inherited by Julia (Alex Essoe) after the car-accident-impalement death of her husband.

Stuck in a movie theater seat watching “Renfield” plod along, the answer is a resounding meh.As the Count from “Sesame Street” would say, “‘Renfield’ gets TWO stars! Ah, ah, ah.”Cage — whose career has become so goofy he recently played a parody version of himself who gets kidnapped by a Spanish drug lord — is as funny and self-aware as the evil old vampire. Crazy, it would seem, has become Cage’s new normal. But don’t come looking for a wacky sendup of the story in the vein of Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein.” It’s actually not even as hilarious as that director’s much-worse 1995 movie “Dracula: Dead and Loving It,” and outside of a few basic details the film has little to do with Bram Stoker’s book.“Renfield,” directed by Chris McKay, has more in common with the (far better) “Zombieland” series, with high-body-count action sequences, quick-cut comedy and an unlikely, socially awkward hero. That would be Robert Montague Renfield (Nicholas Hoult), Count Dracula’s beleaguered “familiar,” who has been gifted an unnaturally long life in exchange for bringing the vamp fresh victims.

voiced by Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) work as plumbers.It’s a realistic setting. I spot mustachioed guys wearing overalls in Williamsburg all the time.But perhaps the boys would be better off selling artisan beard oil on Bedford, because they’re not very good with their socket wrenches.

Amazon Studios’ robustly entertaining, real-life drama definitely has the makings of one. It’s far and away the most likable film released so far this year.There’s a starry cast led by Matt Damon, Viola Davis, Jason Bateman and Ben Affleck, who also directs his best movie since “Argo” 11 years ago. Running time: 112 minutes.

Netflix has padded its catalog of cinematic background noise some more with “Murder Mystery 2,” the instantly forgettable sequel to its rancid whodunit comedy starring Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler as married crime solvers. Running time: 89 minutes. Rated PG-13 (violence, bloody images, strong language, suggestive material and smoking).

awarded the first film zero stars — few people saw and even fewer remember. Running time: 134 minutes. Rated PG-13 (fantasy action/violence and some language.) In theaters.And the source material, the role-playing game “Dungeons & Dragons,” is famously confusing and impenetrable to outsiders.