Peter Travers
Top Rated Films
Peter Travers's Film Reviews
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This reboot of National Lampoon classic isn’t worth leaving home for.
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That last section of the movie, with Amy wasted by alcohol, drugs and eating disorders, is a gruesome horror show. But you don’t turn away, because the film has made Amy so touchingly, recognizably human. It’s her words, her music, her voicemails, her home videos, her friends, her family, her tormentors, and her timeless incandescence. Look, listen and weep.
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Most of all Schwarzenegger: At 67, he can still kick girlie-man ass with the best of them (eat your heart out, Ant-Man). “I’m old, not obsolete,” says the guardian Terminator, barely annoyed with the aging flesh attached to his metal ecosystem. He’s back. And he’s the Man.
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…this state-of-the-art dino epic is also more than a blast of rumbling, roaring, “did you effing see that!” fun. It’s got a wicked streak of subversive attitude that goes by the name of Colin Trevorrow.
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The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part I comes out blazing. How could it not? Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence, suited up again as the heroic Katniss Everdeen, is a firebrand for the ages. Returning director Francis Lawrence (no relation), working from a script by series newbies Peter Craig and Danny Strong, delivers the dazzle without sacrificing the smarts. The suspense is killer. Ditto the thrill of the hunt. The film uses the extra time to, of all things, develop characters and give this dystopian fable a human scale.
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For starters, don’t race to see it. Need for Speed is based on a racing video-game franchise that has sold 150 million copies. It stars Aaron Paul (Jesse on the immortal Breaking Bad). Paul is a good actor, with two Emmys to prove it, but he’s not a screen-filling star presence in the muscle-bound mold of Vin Diesel (The Fast and the Furious). This stings because there’s nothing to distract you from a plot so tired there are tire tracks from other racing movies all over it.
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After Earth merits comparison with 2000’s Battlefield Earth, John Travolta’s godawful film tribute to the sci-fi novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Yes, it’s that bad.