Predicting the Oscars was extraordinarily hard this year — harder than I can remember in a long time. Usually by this point, with the Academy Awards ceremony just a few days away, the frontrunners have established themselves pretty clearly. And while this is true (for the most part) in the...
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Revisiting The Breakfast Club
Any self-respecting child of the ’80s loves John Hughes and knows at least one of the writer-director’s films by heart. While “Sixteen Candles” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” are a total blast, the Hughes movie that mattered to me most growing up was “The Breakfast Club,” and it remains one...
Read moreFifty Shades of Grey
Universal Pictures Rated R for some strong sexual content including dialogue, some unusual behavior and graphic nudity, and for language. Running time: 125 minutes. Three stars out of four. I liked “Fifty Shades of Grey,” and I am not ashamed. I realize this is not the most popular opinion. The...
Read moreJupiter Ascending
Warner Bros. Pictures. Rated PG-13 for some violence, sequences of sci-fi action, some suggestive content and partial nudity. Running time: 125 minutes. One and a half stars out of four. It’s difficult to tell whether “Jupiter Ascending,” the latest sci-fi extravaganza from the writing-directing Wachowski siblings, intends to be as...
Read moreRogerEbert.com — The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water
This second feature-length film based on the long-running “SpongeBob Squarepants” TV series is as zippy and zany as fans have come to expected. The animated, underwater sequences are a blast. It’s the back-and-forth to live action on dry land that’s the problem. My mixed RogerEbert.com review. Read the review...
Read moreRogerEbert.com — Love, Rosie
Lily Collins and Sam Claflin are attractive and appealing as lifelong best friends who are clearly meant to be together, but the many contrived obstacles that keep them apart are more irritating than romantic. The lighting is pretty, though. My RogerEbert.com review. Read the review here...
Read moreBackstreet Boys: Show ‘Em What You’re Made Of
Gravitas Ventures Unrated. 101 minutes. Three stars out of four. Notwithstanding the distracting use of a preposition at the end of its title, the documentary “Backstreet Boys: Show ‘Em What You’re Made Of” mostly stays on target as both an engaging and entertaining look at the boy band’s attempted resurgence....
Read moreRogerEbert.com — The Boy Next Door
“The Boy Next Door” is terrible, but it isn’t delightfully terrible enough. An R-rated erotic thriller starring Jennifer Lopez as a sexy high school English teacher being stalked by a hunk half her age should wallow in its over-the-top premise. And it does, eventually — but the insane climax of...
Read moreRogerEbert.com — The Humbling
Al Pacino dials it down and does some of his best work in a long time as a veteran actor struggling to regain his former glory. If that premise sounds a lot like “Birdman,” well, yes — that is an unfortunate coincidence. But Pacino’s performance is the strongest element in...
Read moreBlackhat
Universal Pictures Rated R for violence and some language. Running time: 133 minutes. One and a half stars out of four. The notion of a terrible Michael Mann movie seems like an oxymoron. It doesn’t make any sense coming from the man behind “Heat” and “The Insider” and “Collateral.” But...
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