Ice Age

Review by Bob Ignizio

Wow, is ICE AGE: COLLISION COURSE seriously the fifth film in the ICE AGE franchise? For those unfamiliar with the series, it involves a group of prehistoric mammals: mammoths Mannie (voiced by Ray Romano), Ellie (voiced by Queen Latifah), Peaches (Keke Palmer), and Julian (Adam Devine); saber tooth tigers Diego (Dennis Leary) and Shira (Jennifer Lopez); sloths Sid (John Leguizamo) and Granny (Wanda Sykes); opossums Crash (Sean William Scott) and Eddie (Josh Peck); and finally, somewhat unbalanced weasel Buck (Simon Pegg).

Walking With Dinosaurs

Review by Pete Roche

We were supposed to catch WALKING WITH DINOSAURS a couple weeks back, but an electronic throttle control problem with our Jeep conspired with a Saturday morning snowstorm to prevent our trek to the Richmond screening.  My son and I were finally able to catch a weekend matinee at Crocker while his sister checked out another title with her friends.  By the time this review posts, chances are WALKING will have vanished from theatres, not unlike the mass disappearance of the big lizards all those epochs ago. 

But hey, better late….

Produced in part by BBC Earth (who created a similarly-titled documentary miniseries back in 1999) WALKING is the computer-animated tale of three dinos and their winged companion / mouthpiece struggling to survive over 70 million years ago in the wilderness that would become Alaska.

The Lincoln Lawyer

Review by Bob Ignizio

It sometimes seems like the only American movies made for adults these days are low key indie dramas or convoluted meditations on what is or isn't real. That's fine if you enjoy that sort of thing, provided it's done well. But there's an audience out there of people in their 40's and beyond who would just like a decent story with a little action and a strong cast, helmed by a director who understands that the focus should be on those things and not the flashy, artistic camera moves they picked up back when they were shooting music videos and commercials. The kind of movie people like my parents would like to see, and I say that without any hint of dismissiveness. It is this kind of movie that THE LINCOLN LAWYER aspires to be, and to a fair degree it succeeds.

Matthew McConaughey is Mick Haller, the sort of criminal defense attorney most people are thinking of when they say they hate lawyers. He actually prefers defending guilty clients because, if he loses and they go to jail, it won't bother him nearly as much as if he had lost while defending an innocent man. Haller doesn't lose much, though, leading to characters making the usual complaints leveled against those in his profession about how he lets scum walk the streets.