Kev's Reviews

Space exploration has been the theme of many blockbusters.  A Trip to the Moon (1902),   Apollo 13 (1995), Interstellar (2014), and others. It has become a cash cow for Hollywood, boosting box office sales to infinity and beyond! But, all pale in comparison with the latest space odyssey, First Man, which chronicles Neil Armstrong's struggles and successes leading up to his iconic first step on the Moon, July 20, 1969. B ased on James R. Hansen’s biography of Armstrong, the film begins with adult Armstrong test-flying the not-quite-controllable X-15 airplane-makeshift rocket. I'm sure Director Damien Chazelle fought the urge to make this two-hour film into a full-blown biopic - which ended up being for the best. Instead, he created a tense drama with a Montage of glances of Armstrong's youth. Skipping church, they flew planes. Instead of living the stereotypical 1940s American family lifestyle, they lived in the air.  "W e skipped Sunday school and took our first

Add caption Impossible covert operations - that's what the IMF does. Tom Cruise returns as point man Ethan Hunt in what may be - not only the best of the Mission: Impossible franchise, but the best action movie of all. Good intentions can be a fatal flaw. IMF agent Ethan Hunt is tasked to intercept three stolen plutonium cores but fails to recover them when he is forced to make a split-second decision between retrieving the cores or saving his best friend, Luther. Cruise, 56, holds nothing back jumping from planes, brawling in bathrooms with much larger enemies and engaging in a death-defying chase on a motorcycle in Tom-Cruise fashion. If you think he's grasping at straws trying to extend his Hollywood namesake driven by his ego, think again. Cruise shines brightly, once again transforming into the gritty Ethan Hunt who is doggedly pursuing the criminal group called  o rganization The Syndicate (introduced in Rogue Nation).  As CIA Agen t August Walker joins the IMF tea

It's another warm spring morning in N orth Carthage, Missouri, and it's Nick and Amy Elliott Dunne's fifth wedding anniversary. The scene is set for a celebration of a seemingly picture-perfect marriage. Presents, a cake, a handsome husband - but something is terribly wrong: Amy is missing.   Nick runs through the house, crying out for Amy, belligerently. Realizing that the house is empty - save for Bleecker, the pet cat - he dials the police. But, things are not as they appear as in the several upcoming months, police discover evidence implicating Nick. Behind the picture-perfect marital facade hides a series of events filled with lies and deception between the couple slowly, painfully ripping them apart. Nick grows hard feelings towards his estranged wife, but is his mounting frustration enough to make him a killer?  The novel by Gillian Flynn is both gripping and slow-burning as the plot is riddled with peaks and valleys. At times, I couldn't put the book done.

There's no denying Black Panther could not have been released at a better time, during the turbulence rattling our nation,  as the political wall dividing us continues climbing with the president making more enemies than friends, police forces going too far with their authority, and racial profiling sparking outrage. Racking up  over $687 million, the film ranks just above The Dark Knight on the    inflation-adjusted domestic earners list. Still, when you break it down, it's a simple hero-origin story that has been told billions of times.  We start with where Black Panther came from - t he African nation of Wakanda,  T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) returns home in the wake of his father -  King T'Chaka's death. (It wouldn't be a superhero flick if he didn't die, right?) Predictably, T' Challa takes up his rightful role as king.But of course, T'Challa must pass a series of grueling ceremonial tests to prove his strength and ability to lead when he is

From the brilliant mind of Lincoln Child comes a suspenseful reinvention of The Wolfman as enigmalogist Jeremy Logan finds a remote community within the fictionalized Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, plagued by recent mysterious,  gruesome deaths.  An investigator of the unexplained, Logan, originally there to work on his monograph, has been drafted into the series of apparent killings by a ranger and old friend,  Randall Jessup, a former Yale classmate who's now a senior officer in New York's Division of Forest Protection.  The bodies have all been turning up in the forest in virtually the same state — shredded, torn limb from limb—and Jessup asks Logan to investigate, knowing that he studies "phenomena beyond the bounds of regular science." The attack may not be the first. Because it happened during a full moon, speculation floats around and Logan catches rumors among the townsfolk about  a family living in isolation called The Blakeneys. Reluctantl

Katherine Graham, the first female publisher of The Washington Post, and Editor Ben Bradlee race against The New York Times to publish a massive cover-up by the US government that spans decades of false reports published in the Pentagon Paper. Together, overcoming differences, Graham and Bradley put their careers - and The Post's reputation - on the line. " Punchy and quick-pulsed, it's a fine example of that now-rare species, the big-city newspaper melodrama,” wrote   Hollywood Reporter's  Todd McCarthy. It's rare for a reason. The film is flushed against the conspiracy of President Lyndon B. Johnson and his administration and the documents that reveal US meddling in the Vietnamese presidential election (sort of like our 2016 election), and the subsequent cover-up by Johnson and Nixon. Daniel Ellsberg, a contributor to the report, had been an analyst on the ground during Vietnam, working for the State Department. Not sure what to do, he sat on the doc

Barry Seal is an American pilot about to make the flight(s) of his life: running drugs for the CIA as the agency investigates clandestine organizations that would be exposed in the Iran-Contra Affair. Captured by actor Tom Cruise, Seal's catch-me-if-you-can spirit drives the film the way Jeff Gordon drives a race car, revealing the true-life events at lighting speed, manic at times, while effectively telling Seal's story in an interview that kicks off this riveting drama inspired by true events. The flop-sweat Seal had been a TWA pilot who enjoyed a lucrative sidehustle smuggling the contraband of Cuban cigars along his commercial flights when he's busted by CIA Agent Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson) who offers him the alternative to prison. For Tom Cruise, this tongue-in-cheek film isn't new as, in many of his roles have been tailored to a certain level of witty humor, but it is rare for director Doug Liman, whose forte is action-packed thrillers such as The Bourne I

If movies were on tracks, this one would be a colossal train wreck. I had heard of Boondock Saints from a friend. I knew it was about two  fraternal twins roaming the streets of Boston to rid the town of criminals while getting heat from a corrupt fed , a "Prince of Thieves" story line. But, what I got was criminal in and of itself. The two main characters, Conner and Murphy MacManus (Sean Patrick Flannery and Norman Reedus, respectively), become vigilantes after killing two Russian mobsters in (almost comic) self-defense, at a pub, ironically the day after attending mass, as the mobsters announce they intend to take over the land on which the pub stood. Because of this cliche, at first, I thought it was a dark comedy as the brothers bumble around and end up killing the Russians in self-defense. FBI agent Paul Smecker (Willem Defoe) is assigned to the case as the media hails the brothers as neighborhood heroes in stereotypical fashion. But the modest duo turn themselves