Collateral Beauty

By George M. Thomas

Will Smith and Helen Mirren in "Collateral Beauty."

What exactly is “collateral beauty?”

The most I can figure is that it’s the good that comes out of any given situation – be that situation tragic, sad or straddling the two.

That’s what a stranger tells a character in the film COLLATERAL BEAUTY, a movie that remains true to the Christmas spirit in that it’s relentlessly optimistic despite the dark material – coping with the grief associated with a child’s death – it explores.

Sometimes that optimism is difficult to ignore and, as in the case of films that tug at heart strings, viewers won’t be able to resist the urge of being drawn into world of Howard (Will Smith), a grieving father and advertising executive who has put his company at risk because of an inability to confront that grief.

Suicide Squad

Will Smith is Deadshot and Margot Robbie is Harley Quinn in SUICIDE
 SQUAD

By George M. Thomas

SUICIDE SQUAD can claim one virtue.  It’s not the FANTASTIC FOUR.  The latter may still hold the title of worst comic book adaptation made in the last five years.

That, however, proves to be the equivalent of being damned by faint praise.  Actually there’s very little praise to go around in this introduction to a group of anti-heroes that inhabit the DC Comics universe.  SUICIDE SQUAD is about as fun as a visit to a proctologist.

Concussion

Review by Pamela Zoslov

The most popular sport in the U.S is not football, basketball or baseball — it's denial. In a landscape dominated by big business, Americans have been told that cigarettes don't cause cancer, that meat is good for you, that guns don't kill people, and other lies that serve the interests of money. One such lie is that football does not cause severe brain injuries, the kind that have led to depression, rage, dementia and suicide among former players.

Winter's Tale

Review by Bob Ignizio

Although an Academy Award winner for his A BEAUTIFUL MIND screenplay, Akiva Goldsman has mainly written and produced mediocre to downright awful films more likely to win Razzies than Oscar's. Now he proves himself a true triple threat by not only writing and producing WINTER'S TALE, but directing it as well.

WINTER'S TALE takes place in some sort of slightly skewed fantasy version New York City, both in the 1900s and the present. An unseen female narrator informs us with much gravity that we're all connected, everyone has a miracle inside them, and friendship is magic. Okay, that last one is 'My Little Pony', but it's on a par with the rest of the metaphysical philosophy spouted by the film.

After Earth

Review by Matt Finley

M. Night Shyamalan has a new movie out, co-written with Gary Whitta (THE BOOK OF ELI), called AFTER EARTH.

In it, humans have ruined the planet, skedaddled to an off-world colony, gotten predatored by aliens who can smell human fear, and fought back by training select individuals – an elite force called the Rangers – to psychologically suppress their fear response (a process called “ghosting”). Real-life celebrity father and son Will and Jaden Smith (the former of whom has a story credit) play famous Ranger, Cypher Raige, and his determined wanna-be Ranger son, Kitai.

When they crash land on the abandoned Earth, which has become a lush, neo-prehistoric forbidden zone of ferocious animals and ruthless climatological fluctuations, a crippled Cypher sends Kitai on a five-day trek through the wilderness to retrieve the ship’s lost beacon – their only means of summoning Cypher’s Ranger buddies.

Men in Black III

Review by Pete Roche

Director Barry Sonnenfeld (GET SHORTY, ADDAMS FAMILY) first brought Lowell Cunningham’s offbeat comic book MEN IN BLACK to the big screen in 1997.  The terrific, odd couple chemistry between Will Smith’s hip secret agent and his crusty counterpart, played by Tommy Lee Jones, was a hit.  

In that film, Agent K (Jones) groomed J (Smith) for a career with Men in Black—a clandestine government agency tasked with policing extraterrestrial life on Earth and concealing knowledge of said aliens from humans (Think I.N.S. for E.T).  The new partners tested each other’s nerves while hunting a giant space cockroach (Vincent D’Onofrio).  J returned the favor in 2002’s MEN IN BLACK II, plucking mentor K from retirement to save Earth from a shape-shifting Kylothian queen (Lara Flynn Boyle).