'Licorice Pizza' (2021) Movie Review

As a whole, I’m not entirely certain what Licorice Pizza, the new 70s-set coming-of-age film from Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom Thread), amounts to. Pieces are absolutely magical, full of joy and whimsy. Others…are a bit more problematic, at best; downright cringe-inducing at worst. It watches like a movie where the filmmaker has zero checks and balances, able to indulge any and every flight of fancy with no oversight. Which is both a good and bad thing by turns. This freedom allows PTA to indulge himself; the flipside of that is, of course, overindulgence. 

'The Gunman' Movie Review: Continues The Aging Tough Guy Action Renaissance

Bookended by news clips and stock footage of Western exploitation of the people and resources of the Congo, you may be forgiven for thinking Pierre Morel’s new thriller The Gunman has larger political aspirations. This element feels tailor made for star Sean Penn, who also gets a shared screenwriting credit for helping adapt Jean-Patrick Manchette’s novel The Prone Gunman. Instead, what you get is another in a line of action vehicles for aging actors looking for a late career revitalization. Morel, is, after all, the guy who helmed Taken and helped transform Liam Neeson into an onscreen ass kicking machine, so who better to take the lead here?

Sean Penn Does Some Bad Things In This Trailer For 'The Gunman'

It appears we live in a world where every aging actor eventually gets reborn as a grizzled, badass action star. Liam Neeson has the Taken movies, Pierce Brosnan is still playing the ass-kicking international spy, and even Salma Hayek (who, granted, is only 48) got to blast the hell out of everyone in Everly. For the record, I am totally on board with this trend, I love a good grim tough-guy/girl film, and it looks like the latest addition to this train is Sean Penn, as you can clearly see in this trailer for The Gunman.

'Gangster Squad' Movie Review

“Gangster Squad” is a film a lot of people may take the wrong way. Most of us thought we were in store for a gritty, violent gangster pic, and while there is plenty of brutality—one of the first things you see is a pair of cars rip a guy in half, and coyotes feasting on his innards—that’s not exactly what you get. What director Ruben Fleisher (“Zombieland”) delivers is more of a period melodrama that just happens to tell a gangster story. Full of action, it’s also a damn lot of cartoonish fun for a while, like a blood soaked “Dick Tracy”. “Gangster Squad” plays out like a light movie serial, but at the end of the day, however, you want there to be something more.

'The Tree of Life' Movie Review

When you consider the career of a filmmaker like Terrence Malick you have to mention the fact that in his career, now spanning more than forty years, the guy has only directed five films. Sure he’s written a bunch of others, and produced a few more, so it’s not like he’s resting on his laurels, but no matter how you look at it, the man takes his time. So it’s understandable that each of his movies is a bit of an event, and his latest, “The Tree of Life”, is no exception. The whole thing has been shrouded in mystery from the get go. We knew Brad Pitt and Sean Penn were in the movie, but additional details have been sparse at best.