Movie Reviews: Last News

had Keanu Reeves gallop on a horse through Brooklyn? Four tremendous films and nine years into the adrenaline-fueled, Reeves-led action series, director Chad Stahelski has yet to let his franchise noticeably dip in quality. “Wick” wields an assured identity and fireworks style with the same confidence of its main character carrying a deadly pistol.

the world saw “Black Adam” and was fully convinced that the movie was as low as DC Comics could possibly go, here comes “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” to outdo it in the limbo line of awfulness.We’re talking about a film in which the sentence “The most powerful thing about you… is you!” is uttered twice.A film with a character named Steve, who is an all-knowing, enchanted pen.Zero stars. Running time: 130 minutes.

on a New York City subway platform.  Who cares if it’s Ghostface or not? Is this lunatic gonna push her onto the tracks?It’s a fleeting, ripped-from-the-headlines thrill in what’s otherwise a snooze-fest that mechanically rips off what came before it. Running time: 123 minutes. Rated R (strong bloody violence and language throughout, and brief drug use).Not to mention that this first “Scream” movie to be set in the city is a total waste of NYC. Don’t spend any mental energy trying to figure out what street the characters are running down, what park they’re hiding out in, or what borough it is.

decades-old film franchises out there to which I say: Keep making more, please.The pulse-pounding “Creed III” is the ninth movie in the series. And although there is nary a mention of Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa in this one, the indomitable spirit, grit and heart that made the 1976 original a surprise hit is still alive — 47 years later.Running time: 116 minutes. Rated PG-13 (intense sports action, violence and some strong language).

2019’s “The Gentlemen,” he’d have the usually dapper Hugh Grant play a sleazy journalist who refers to England only as “Angleterre” in an East End accent, and in 2021’s “Wrath of Man” he showcased frequent collaborator Jason Statham’s ability to switch from hilarious to killing machine.With this director, we’re never so much watching an espionage or crime movie as enjoying another off-the-rails Guy Ritchie attraction. That is, until “Operation Fortune,” the co-writer and director’s most uninspired movie in a minute. Lazily bopping around to exotic locales like Cannes, France, Antalya, Turkey, and Doha, Qatar, it’s a generic collage of mega-yachts, luxe hotels, fancy parties, disguised identities and tame fights that add up to a big nothing.Worry not about your blood pressure at “Ruse de guerre.” One chase scene in sunny Antalya, with actor Max Beesley on a vespa, is downright soothing.

director Elizabeth Banks keeps the powder gags fresh throughout, as the mammal maims her way through a Southern forest preserve. The movie about blow never blows.Running time: 95 minutes. Rated R (bloody violence and gore, drug content and language throughout.) In theaters.The hysterical film is based on a true story in the loosest possible sense.

brutally murder 11 people … is a sentence I never thought I’d write.But that’s what goes down in the sicko indie horror film “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey,” which played theaters for one night only on Wednesday. And, believe you me, one night is enough.How has the 100 Acre Wood legally been turned into a barbaric onscreen hunting ground that slashes the throat of childhood nostalgia? Running time: 84 minutes.

red-hot Majors has gravitas as he snarls about the injustices the world has done to him. Whenever he’s onscreen, we are transfixed.Running time: 125 minutes. Rated PG-13 (violence/action, and language.) In theaters Feb.

Aquaman,” at least, had giant rideable seahorses and Nicole Kidman as a mermaid. “Black Adam” boasts Pierce Brosnan giving a worse performance than when he sang “Knowing Me, Knowing You” in “Mamma Mia!”Two decades after Johnson mind-numbingly barreled through the sand as “The Scorpion King,” he plays basically the same complicated warrior type only with less hair and zero personality. A prologue informs us that 5,000 years ago in fictional Kahndaq — could be Egypt, could be the Middle East — a young slave sacrificed himself to free his people and was therefore granted super powers by the ancient wizard from “Shazam!” He becomes Teth-Adam, Kahndaq’s champion.Back in the present day, the poor city is under military occupation by an evil company called Intergang (the bad guys have “no worries!” Australian accents) and is being plundered for its main natural resource, Eternium.

Peacock Friday, you’ll consider taking Wite-Out to the title and changing it to “Halloween Keeps Going, Please.” Director David Gordon Green was deservedly lauded in 2018 for his superb first ‘ween film, which restored the Michael Myers vs. Laurie Strode death match to its 1970s gritty glory after a string of bombs in the 1990s and aughts.

Bohemian Rhapsody” about a celebrated maestro we would all be more familiar with if we had the time and money to regularly attend the Berliner Philharmoniker and skim Der Spiegel. Nein! She’s fake.Running time: 158 minutes.

Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Rami Malek, Robert De Niro, Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy . . .

out on Disney+ 29 years later, is much, much worse.Running time: 104 minutes. Rated PG (action, macabre/suggestive humor and some language).

Netflix’s new Marilyn Monroe movie that hopes to be a major contender during awards season.Running time: 166 minutes. Rated NC-17 (some sexual content). Out Sept.

HBO series “Girls” was infamously nudity-and-sex-filled has segued to the coming-of-age genre with her charming comedy “Catherine Called Birdy,” which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.Running time: 108 minutes. Rated PG-13 (some suggestive material and thematic elements). In theaters Sept.

Toronto International Film Festival, we believed that the main characters actually loved each other.Running time: 113 minutes. Rated R (sexual content). In theaters Oct.

Toronto International Film Festival.Unless, of course, you holler, “Allelujah! It’s time to go home!”That’s because the dinky drama, about a struggling hospital for the elderly in England, gets steadily more depressing as it plods along. There’s nothing wrong with some silver screen sorrow, but not when it amounts to indecisive mush. Sure, it is a pleasure to see the boffo acting talent together — Jennifer Saunders, Judi Dench, Derek Jacobi and more — but they deserve so much better than hospital Jell-O. The creaky film began as a play at London’s Bridge Theatre by writer Alan Bennett, who also penned “The History Boys,” and much like the 2006 screen version of that show, “Allelujah,” directed by Richard Eyre, doesn’t comfortably make the leap to cinema.

2019 “Knives Out” premiered Saturday at the Toronto International Film Festival. Called “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” the Netflix movie brings back Daniel Craig’s Detective Benoit Blanc and throws him in with an entirely new crew of wealthy eccentrics.Running time: 139 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Toronto International Film Festival, has been shrouded in secrecy for months. About all we knew going in was that the movie is based on the famed director’s own life, and stars Williams, Paul Dano and Seth Rogen. Running time: 151 minutes.

Toronto International Film Festival.Bri (Jamila C. Gray), a 16-year-old aspiring rapper, rises from late-night rap battles at an underground venue called the Ring in her fictional hometown of Garden Heights to having the most-played song on the radio. Running time: 115 minutes.

Marilyn Monroe biopic “Blonde” starring Ana de Armas premiered at the Venice Film Festival Thursday, earning praise from several critics for its portrayal of the 1950s blonde bombshell. Adapted from the Joyce Carol Oates novel of the same name, the film runs nearly three hours and received a 14-minute standing ovation from the crowd, which caused de Armas to break down into tears, according to Variety.“Andrew Dominik’s Venice Film Festival competition entry ‘Blonde’ takes a blowtorch to the entire concept of the Hollywood biopic and arrives at something almost without precedent,” Deadline’s critic said.“[‘Blonde’] is simply inventing fresh indignities for the most positively, permanently persecuted heroine outside of a John Waters movie ever to have to suffer.” As Netflix’s first film with an NC-17 rating, “Blonde” sparked backlash almost instantly when it debuted its first trailer in July over the casting of de Armas due to the fact that she is Cuban and her accent was not “authentic.”Variety’s critic Owen Gleiberman disagreed in his review, saying the film is “built around a performance, by Ana de Armas, of breathtaking shimmer and imagination and candor and heartbreak.