Image: Warner Bros.
Chris Luckett
It’s a Spielberg movie.
Truly, that should be enough. If any living filmmaker has earned the assumption that every movie of theirs will be, at the very worst, worth seeing — and at the very best, a masterpiece like E.T. or Raiders of the Lost Ark — it’s Sir Stevie. And sure enough, Ready Player One is, at the very least, worth seeing. More than that, it’s the most fun movie of 2018 so far.
Image: Focus Features
Chris Luckett
Gary Oldman is one of the great chameleons of our time. Over the last three decades, he’s played Sid Vicious and Lee Harvey Oswald, Beethoven and Dracula, Commissioner Gordon and Sirius Black. Unfathomably, he somehow even convincingly played a dwarf in the otherwise terrible Tiptoes. He disappears into every role he plays, whether it’s a literary titan in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead or whatever the hell he was in The Fifth Element.
Despite it all, he’s never earned that coveted Oscar. (He received his first and only nomination just five years ago, for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.) Barring any unforeseen circumstances, he’ll get his second when the Academy Award nominations are read in three weeks. Based on his stunning portrayal of Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, he may very well win.
Image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Chris Luckett
Don’t call it a prequel.
The first stand-alone movie outside the Skywalker saga, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, takes place directly before 1977’s Star Wars (A New Hope).
As anyone who’s seen that sci-fi classic will remember, the Death Star was blown up because Luke Skywalker and his band of rebel pilots had secret plans of the base that revealed its fatal flaw. Rogue One is the story of how those secret plans were stolen, by a band of brave strangers willing to fight back against tyranny.
Photo: Twentieth Century Fox
Chris Luckett
Since the first Star Wars anthology film, Rogue One, was announced last year, Darth Vader was said be appearing in the movie — although in what capacity has remained a question mark until now. Continue reading
Chris Luckett
Photo: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
When it was announced to the world that the director of the seventh Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens, would be J.J. Abrams, it made the most sense of anyone imaginable. The task of continuing arguably the most beloved film saga of all time — while also redeeming the collective disappointment of “the prequels” — was a fool’s errand, after all.
Of course, so was rebooting Star Trek in 2009, which Abrams handled with such deft aplomb that it resurrected the entire franchise. Abrams showed the perfect flair for paying respect to a series’ roots (which a new Star Wars movie is required, by nature, to do) while also being unafraid to take bold chances (which the three most recent Star Wars movies largely failed to do).
Perhaps most anticipated about The Force Awakens has not been what the exact plot would be or how new and old characters would intertwine but how well Abrams would do with the torch that Disney passed on, after George Lucas finally released his grip. The world can now release its collective breath. J.J. Abrams’ hugely successful rescue of the series represents the truest new hope for the saga since 1977 — and in more literal ways than you may expect. Continue reading
Photo: Twentieth Century Fox
Chris Luckett
In one way, it’s been a great year for religious and spiritual films, with 2014 already having given us Noah, Heaven is for Real, Son of God, God’s Not Dead, Mom’s Night Out, Persecuted, When the Game Stands Tall, The Identical, and The Book of Life. In another way, though, it’s been a terrible year for faith-based films, as almost all of the aforementioned movies were bad, if not outright terrible. Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings may be another Biblical movie in a long string of them, but it’s also better than most.
The Apple Box 