X-Men: First Class (2011) is both a reboot and a prequel to the big screen comic book series about a team of mutant superheroes with new, younger models of the series elders Charles “Professor X” Xavier (James McAvoy as a flirtatious, precocious incarnation of Patrick Stewart’s more professorial figure) and Erik “Magneto” Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender, […]
Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone (2010), set in the crime and poverty of the Ozark Mountains, is a coming-of-age survival story in an outlaw culture where meth labs have replaced moonshine stills and the code of silence is enforced with pitiless finality. Jennifer Lawrence was revelation as the 17-year-old Ree, who has grown up fast to […]
David O. Russell wrote (or rather, rewrote) Joy (2015) for Jennifer Lawrence, who he directed to an Academy Award in Silver Linings Playbook (2012) and an Oscar nomination in American Hustle. Lawrence score another nomination for Joy, based on the true story of Joy Mangano, the divorced single mother turned entrepreneur who invented the Miracle […]
X-Men Apocalypse (2016), the sixth in the official X-Men big screen franchise (the ninth if you count the Wolverine and Deadpool spin-offs) and the third film in the prequel trilogy, is cut to fit into the big screen mythos as carved out of the source comics by director Bryan Singer. He directed the first two […]
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (2015) brings an end to the first and most successful big screen adaptation of a young adult dystopian thriller of an oppressive, brutal future. Divergent and The Maze Runner followed with less success, both commercially and dramatically, and for that matter the Hunger Games movies wind down as […]
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part I, the top box office hit of 2014, follows the lead of the Harry Potter and Twilight series by splitting the final book into two film installments, making this the third of four films. For anyone who has read the books that might seem like quite a stretch, drawing out […]
