entertaining

Film: Anyone But YouCast: Sydney Sweeney, Glen Powell, Alexandra Shipp, GaTa, Dermot Mulroney, Bryan Brown, Hadley Robinson, Michelle Hurd, Charlee Fraser, Rachel Griffiths, Darren BarnetDirector: Will GluckRating: 2.5/5Runtime: 103 min Just when you thought the Hollywood brand of romantic comedies was going extinct, comes this fresh, fairly entertaining romcom that scores its hits mainly because of the stirring chemistry between its leads and some smart dialogue writing. This one is neither a compelling love story nor…

Ever since he first lumbered on to the big screen in Ishiro Honda’s 1954 original film, Godzilla has been more than just a monster. The city-crunching prehistoric mega-reptile has been cast as a metaphor for the nuclear threat, American military might and environmental abuses. He also represents a seemingly boundless franchise opportunity, having appeared in almost 40 films, of wildly varying quality. Of all these, the terrific Godzilla Minus One is one of the very best. Written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki (best…

Netflix users love every ape they see, from chimpan-A to chimpan-Z. Nobody can deny the awesomeness of apes, particularly really angry ones riding horses and wielding pump-action shotguns. This is at the core of the iconic Planet of the Apes franchise, which got one of the most successful soft reboots in history with 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes. This showed the beginnings of an ape-dominated world while breaking new ground in performance capture technology. Now that film’s two sequels Dawn of the Planet of the…

Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu), Donatello (Micah Abbey), Raphael (Brady Noon), and Michelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.) just want to be able to go to school and do things normal human teenagers get to do. To even interact with humans, however, goes against the rules of their father, Splinter (Jackie Chan), who fears the violence humans will commit against mutants and has trained his adopted turtle sons in ninjitsu to defend themselves. The turtles break their dad's rules and befriend April O'Neil (Ayo Edobiri), a…

Chain-Gang All-Stars is an exuberant circus of a novel, action-packed and expansive, almost too much to process. It plays out in a dystopian US just a shuffle-step from the norm, where predominantly Black prisoners fight not just for the entertainment of a primetime TV audience but, indirectly, for the reader’s benefit too. The narrative explodes in all directions. The tale at the centre is sometimes obscured. The book is unruly and knowingly compromised but it comes fuelled by a sense of thrilling, righteous rage.Nana…

”Wise guys realise / There’s danger in emotional ties …” Here was one of the most artlessly, chillingly brilliant pop lyrics of the 80s, from Wham!’s Young Guns (Go For It), something to compare with the triumph of Madonna being a material girl in a material world. You can’t help thinking again about its relevance to Andrew Ridgeley and George Michael’s emotional ties to each other as you watch this entertaining but weirdly incurious documentary, composed of existing footage and voiceover commentary, apparently salvaged…

Film: The FlashCast: Ezra Miller, Sasha Calle, Michael Shannon, Ron Livingston, Maribel Verdú, Kiersey Clemons, Antje Traue, Michael Keaton, Ian Loh, Ben Affleck, Gal GadotDirector: Andy MuschiettiRating: 3/5Runtime: 144 mins The much-awaited ‘The Flash’ is a mixed experience at best. It has spectacle and blockbuster elements, glitzy action with a fair dose of comedy thrown in but its longish runtime, general incoherence, and inconsistent VFX keep frustrating you every once in a while. Barry…

Film: About my father (Lionsgate)Cast: Sebastian Maniscalco, Robert De Niro, Leslie Bibb, Anders Holm, David Rasche, Brett Dier and Kim CattrallDirector: Laura TerrusoRating: 2.5/5Runtime: 90 mins `About My Father`, with a screenplay by star Sebastian Maniscalco and Austen Earl, doesn’t feel much like a feature comedy. It is written like a lengthy stand-up comedy routine, with just the right pauses after every comedy set. Thankfully it’s not a monologue. There are other interesting players and acts here. This…

The Fast & Furious franchise reached the ideal level of sublime ridiculousness with Fast Five, which brought Dom Toretto, Brian O’Conner and four films’ worth of gearhead rogues together for a compact heist thriller that’s basically Ocean’s Eleven with cars. It peaks with the ultimate smash-and-grab job, as Dom and Brian attach a giant bank vault to their Dodge Chargers and drag it through the streets of Rio de Janeiro, occasionally thwacking their pursuers like an improvised wrecking ball. The films that followed…

By Mark Kennedy | Associated Press Gather around, young ones. Silence your iPhones and Samsungs. We’re here to learn about the Before Times, when the hottest tech device was nicknamed “CrackBerry.” The gripping and hugely enjoyable “BlackBerry” is about the famous — and later infamous — Research in Motion gadget that helped trigger the global smartphone era as we know it, before sliding into obsolescence. The BlackBerry may seem quaint now in the days of sleek water resistant 5G phones with face ID, but it was the first…