Times Movie Critic, Tampa Bay Times

Times Movie Critic

Tampa Bay Times

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Past articles by Times:

George Clooney and the Coen brothers' 'Suburbicon' is a half-baked mess

George Clooney's latest directing effort, Suburbicon, is a movie tipping off why it's going wrong before it actually happens. → Read More

John Cleese talks Trump, Clinton, British politics and why American fans laugh more

After a half-century of dead parrots, silly walks and singing lumberjacks, John Cleese knows strange when he sees it. → Read More

Review: 'The Florida Project' a breathtaking movie about homeless life around the Mouse

Get ready to fall in love with a movie and its pint-sized star. → Read More

'The Florida Project' movie explores the hidden homeless living around Disney World

KISSIMMEE — Outside Disney World's main gate, the magic wears off at Celebration's end. → Read More

A conversation with the 7-year-old Orlando stars of 'The Florida Project'

Brooklynn Prince and Valeria Cotto are the steal-your-heart stars of The Florida Project, both 7 and going on adorable. → Read More

Andy Serkis' directing debut 'Breathe' is not so inspiring

After such a revolutionary acting career, Andy Serkis should be expected to make an equally inventive directing debut. Breathe is anything but that. → Read More

Somehow Thurgood Marshall isn't even the star in his own biopic 'Marshall'

Truth is an obstacle that the Thurgood Marshall biopic never overcomes. → Read More

'Professor Marston and the Wonder Women' is comic book heroine's R-rated back story

Wonder Woman was a PG-13 blockbuster but her real origins are for adults only, as depicted in Professor Marston & the Wonder Women (R). Writer-director Angela Robinson dramatizes her comic book creator's erotic inspirations; you'll never think of Wonder Woman's lasso of truth the same way again. → Read More

Dale Gordon, executive director of Film Tampa Bay, resigns

Four years after taking over as Hillsborough County's de facto film commissioner, it's a wrap for Dale Gordon. → Read More

Pup fiction: A doggie film festival is coming to Tampa this weekend

Take your best friend on a leash Friday to Water Works Park on Tampa's Riverwalk for open-air screenings of selections from the NY Dog Film Festival at 6 and 8 p.m. → Read More

'Blade Runner 2049' is as puzzling and striking as the original, sure to be equally revered

If not electric sheep, of what do androids dream? → Read More

Tom Cruise's 'American Made' is hectic but familiar fun, all speed and greed

After all the goodfellas, war dogs and Wall Street wolves, American Made doesn't have much new to show about good people getting rich off doing bad things. Money is still the root of affable evil thanks to Tom Cruise's winning grin, in a true-life amorality tale needing to dig deeper. → Read More

'Victoria & Abdul' is a charmer peppered with snooty spoofery

Queen Victoria lived long and lonely enough to fill two movies, both starring Judi Dench, each with distinct approaches to the monarch's widowed years. → Read More

'Battle of the Sexes' is a fine time capsule comedy, and not really about the tennis

In 1973, tennis champion Billie Jean King joined a two-ring circus with hustler Bobby Riggs, billed as a Battle of the Sexes amid the women's liberation movement. Fifty million Americans watched the pop spectacle on TV. → Read More

Poorly assembled 'Lego Ninjago Movie' waters down Lego movie franchise

Well, that didn't take long.After only three movies, the Lego franchise is already a shadow of its original self, less irreverent and go-for-broke bricky. The watering down of an ingenious formula comes with The Lego Ninjago Movie, the sort we expected all along from plastic construction toys. → Read More

'Kingsman: The Golden Circle' is exhausting, crass and too long

Kingsman: The Golden Circle is a tarnished sequel demolishing the original's balderdash charm in a torrent of tumble-dry camera moves, CGI slosh and Elton John f-bombs. → Read More

'Stronger' a sobering, sap-free survivor tale from the Boston Marathon bombing

What didn't kill Jeff Bauman made him Stronger, surviving not only the Boston Marathon terrorist bombings but a crush of well-meaning yet corrosive attention for doing it. → Read More

See ghost tours and scary movies at Tampa Theatre leading up to Halloween

Neat trick, Tampa Theatre, packing so many Halloween treats into the fifth annual Nightmare on Franklin Street. → Read More

'Home Again' with Reese Witherspoon is so bad this critic walked out

This week, I followed my instincts and evacuated during an evolving disaster. → Read More

This is the spooky, overlong movie 'It' deserves, and 'It' deserves a sequel

It doesn't clown around. Freed from 20th century network television standards, Stephen King's novel on screen can be as much bloody, vulgar fun as It is supposed to be. → Read More