By Joshua Starnes ON August 17, 2016 It’s hard to say exactly which is the most frustrating aspect of Ben-Hur; the catalog of terrible decisions on display or the good choices all those bad ideas cover up. Quiet when it should be loud, loud when it should be quiet, the newest version of Lew Wallace’s

9:00 AM PDT 8/2/2016 by Todd McCarthy Director David Ayer (‘Fury’) brings his eagerly awaited DC Comics-based action noir to the screen, with Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Jared Leto and Viola Davis starring. A puzzlingly confused undertaking that never becomes as cool as it thinks it is, Suicide Squad assembles an all-star team of supervillains

By Joshua Starnes ON July 28, 2016 William Goldman famously said of Hollywood “no one knows nothing;” the creators of successful films are frequently just as clueless as to why their films succeeded as the creators of failures. The only strategy for dealing with this problem is, when success is stumbled over, to repeat, repeat,

11:40 PM PDT 3/14/2016 by John DeFore Seth Rogen leads an A-list cast of voice actors playing groceries who don’t know what happens once they’re taken home from the supermarket. Sausage Party, an R-rated comedy about food products waiting to be sold at a supermarket, begins unpromisingly, with a musical number so effing gratuitously overstuffed

The afterlife is a pretty mysterious thing, even for those of us who have a good idea of where we’re going. What will our ultimate destination look like? Feel like? Will it have lots of harps? Could it spiral through nine circles? We read our Bibles and listen to the experts and maybe even watch

Caleb Smith has just won the lottery. It’s not the kind of lottery most people ever have a chance to play. The 26-year-old coder at the world’s largest search engine, Bluebook, has won a company-wide contest to spend a week with their famously reclusive president, Nathan Bateman. How reclusive? Well, to get to the guy,

As this seventh story starts, Dominic Toretto and his makeshift family of hotshot hot rodders and heavy-fisted rumblers are all focused on personal pursuits. Former undercover cop Brian, for instance, is gearing up to be a carpool dad and attentive hubby. And Dom’s love interest, Letty, is still trying to regain her memories—lost in a

High school coach Jim White has had his share of troubles. And most of them have sprung from his own actions. You could say he’s got a bit of a temper problem. I mean, he’s never beaten anybody up or anything. But he’s certainly never backed down from a shouting match if some other teacher

Nicky knows his stuff. It’s not the sort of stuff you’d teach your kids or talk about in mixed company. But it’s a certain well-practiced knowledge that only comes after a great deal of hard work and only, really, to a choice few. It’s like that light-footed grace some athletes have on the sports field.

Most queens don’t clean toilets. I just can’t imagine Elizabeth II scrubbing the ceramic thrones at Buckingham Palace. Queens likely have someone else do that sort of thing—someone like Jupiter Jones. Jupiter’s a toilet-cleaning professional—a pro bowler, if you will. She, her mother and her aunt provide maid services for Chicago’s upper class, ensuring that