Current conventional wisdom (or what passes for it in Hollywood, anyway) indicates that there’s very little room in the Cineplex for original ideas. It’s all about creating and maintaining franchises or else buffing a modern sheen onto repackaged old ideas, so the fact that Hollywood rebooted a movie like “Total Recall” isn’t nearly as surprising as the fact that it took over 20 years for them to get around to it.

3 out of 5 - Read full review

By any measure, Abraham Lincoln was one of the greatest presidents this country has ever had. They don’t put you on Mount Rushmore for being a slouch. But according to “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” there’s a whole lot more to the legend of Honest Abe than America could have ever dreamed.

4 out of 5 - Read full review

It has become common in critical circles to look down on the works of Adam Sandler. Sandler’s man-child antics have lost their luster for film critics around the world; those who watch movies for a living have grown tired of Sandler’s never-changing shtick. And with good reason – with very rare exception, the films that Sandler and his Happy Madison production company have produced have been getting steadily worse over the past decade-plus.

It’s always sad when a long-standing cinematic collaboration begins to run out of steam. It happens to the best of them, whether it springs from creative differences, personal issues or just overstaying their welcomes.

I hate to say it, but I think the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp pairing may have reached its sell-by date. The duo’s latest collaboration is “Dark Shadows,” based on the gothic soap opera that originally aired in the late 1960s.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work.

2 out of 5 - Read full review