The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)
This is the one that finally broke me. J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” has the secondary title of “There and Back Again”, which certainly rang true for many readers, who enjoy going back to the...
Tagged: Ian McKellen
X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
Days of Future Past starts off in the near future, where mutants are being hunted to near extinction by super-sophisticated robots known as Sentinels. Not only mutants but homo sapiens carrying the mutant genes as...
The Shadow (1994)
Walter B. Gibson’s famous long-dormant character of the 1930s gets a 1990s update, primarily fitting in the mold of other crime-fighting superhero efforts like Batman and Darkman, both characters whose artistic origins are influenced by the original...
Stardust (2007)
Set 150 years ago, Tristan is a young man in the small English town of Wall who aims to win the hand of the local beauty (Miller) in exchange for a star that has fallen...
X-Men (2000)
Upon first hearing of this project I was skeptical, since it seemed virtually impossible to cram almost 40 years of comic book mythos and the dozens of main characters that are a staple of...
X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
This is the third installment of the X-Men series, continuing the storylines developed since the first X-Men and the show-stopping finale which culminated in the death of Jean Grey (Janssen) in X2. Jean Grey does make a comeback here,...
The Da Vinci Code (2006)
Tom Hanks (The Polar Express, The Terminal) stars as renowned professor of historical religious symbolism Robert Langdon, who finds himself embroiled in a deadly web of intrigue when an old crony ends up murdered in...
Last Action Hero (1993)
Last Action Hero has always been a semi-guilty pleasure of mine, not because I’m ashamed to admit liking it, but because I actually think, unlike most critics, that it is a good and entertaining...
X2: X-Men United (2003)
X2 is probably going to be the dividing point between the fans of the comic book and those that are just along for the ride. If you’re a fan, (and I am a casual fan,...
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
In case you want perspective, I had read Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy and “The Hobbit” as a young teenager, and I consider them among my favorite stories of any medium –...