Movies

By Bob Garver     Spin-off movies for Batman villains have been a mixed bag over the years. “Joker” won an Oscar, but it was followed up with the terrible “Joker: Folie à Deux.” “Suicide Squad” took Harley Quinn from niche fan-favorite to mainstream icon, but “Catwoman” somehow managed to bungle one of the most…

By Bob Garver     The title “Other Mommy” is misleading. The villainous demon haunting 8-year-old Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark) can take any form, including her father (Jay Duplass), her babysitter (Sean Kaufman), or even a complete stranger. But yes, much of the time it impersonates her mother (Jessica Chastain). The reason, I suspect, has…

By Bob Garver       “Verity” wishes it was a twisty thriller. It is indeed twisty, but it doesn’t have the heart to be a thriller. The film’s advertising is clearly positioning it as a successor to last year’s hit front-of-the-bookstore novel adaptation “The Housemaid,” though it is based on a book that predates…

By Bob Garver     In “Primetime,” Robert Pattinson plays Chris Hansen, host of “To Catch a Predator,” an offshoot of NBC’s “Dateline” news program in the mid-2000’s. Hansen and the show’s production team would coordinate with police to lure child predators (via Internet chatrooms where there would be no ambiguity as to their intent)…

By Bob Garver     The streak is over. The last time I started a review with that phrase, it was to mean something bad – 2022’s “Lightyear” was the first Pixar movie that I didn’t recommend. This time, it’s something good – Zach Cregger’s new take on “Resident Evil” is the first movie based…

By Bob Garver     Apparently I blinked and the 1998 chick flick “Practical Magic” developed a huge cult following. The film, about witch sisters Sally (Sandra Bullock) and Gillian (Nicole Kidman) Owens, came out 28 years ago, made only $40 million at the domestic box office, scored a mere 31% on Rotten Tomatoes, and…

By Bob Garver     “By Any Means” is a movie about two disparate FBI employees that can’t decide if it wants to be a “Buddy Cop” movie or not. The pair are mismatched, but are they “comically” mismatched? The pair banter, is there enough banter to qualify for the “Buddy Cop” label? There’s action,…

By Bob Garver     The big drawback to getting in an advance review of “Coyote vs. Acme” last week is that “Insidious: Out of the Further” is even less relevant this week. The horror film toppled from second place to fourth at the domestic box office, behind even the seventh weekend of “The Odyssey,”…

By Bob Garver       The dialogue-free Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons are my favorite of the Looney Tunes. No jokes centered around annoying accents or speech impediments, just pure physical comedy about a hapless carnivore and his Ahab-like obsession with catching and eating a skinny flightless bird. Although the cartoons are ridiculous, they…