When the script by writers Ken Kaufman and Howard Klausner first started making the rounds in Hollywood, Senator John Glenn hadn’t made his historic return to space. “Space Cowboys” met with interest but for a while, inevitable rejection. Warner Bros. bought the script all the same. Then Senator John Glenn was approached about a return to space, accepted, and was strapped into the space shuttle. A history maker remade history once again, becoming the oldest man (at age 77) to go to space. “Space Cowboys” suddenly had an even greater following and push to get to the big screen. Clint Eastwood was selected to direct the film and star as Frank Corvin, an engineering designer whose knowledge becomes a pivotal piece in the plot that unfolds. Eastwood has been in front of the camera for over five decades, but he’s truly come into his own while behind it. Over the past few films ...

  “Sleepy Hollow” is another in the remarkable series of movies that unite director Tim Burton and actor Johnny Depp. They work remarkably well together, apparently sharing a somewhat macabre sense of humor and love of scary movies. This is Burton’s attempt to out-Hammer a Hammer movie—Hammer stalwart Christopher Lee is in the cast—and one of the best-looking films he’s done. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and production designer Rick Heinrichs (who worked with Burton when they were both film students) give the film a burnished sheen, with everything except blood in muted, autumnal tones. Forests are threaded with fog, every acre of ground outside the small town of Sleepy Hollow is ankle-deep in fallen leaves, and the trees are mostly bare. The visual and dramatic tones of the film are perfectly matched, with the design just at the verge of excessive, while the film itself introduces comedy at unexpected moments. The movie is hardly a comedy, ...

  On face-value, “Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow” should have worked. It reached back into the same 1930s to 1940s Saturday morning serial storytelling that proved so successful for the “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” franchises that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg re-invented as Hollywood blockbusters. Those movies used to be broken down into ten- or fifteen-minute segments that were aired every week before the main movie. That way moviegoers had more reason to come back week after week to see the new releases. The serials were known for their quick pacing, heroic characters, and escapism that stopped – most of the time – just short of total disbelief. That was the style Kerry Conran, the director and writer, was reaching for. On many levels, Conran succeeded. However, the movie simply didn’t find as large an audience as it needed. Filled with over-the-top action sequences that never completely stall out between the other ...

  “Clerks,” “Mallrats,” “Chasing Amy” and “Dogma” all featured appearances by Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith)-- two crude, drug-dealing layabouts. “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” takes these two peripheral characters and makes them the central characters in their own film. Jay and Silent Bob discover that the comic book, “Bluntman and Chronic” (which is based on them) is being made into a big budget Hollywood movie without their permission, so the duo head off on a road trip Tinseltown to either shut down the production or get their fare share of the pie… Kevin Smith’s previous films mostly used these two characters sparingly and to good effect. When they’ve been featured in brief bits of business their overwhelming crudity, bald-faced immaturity, appalling sexist diatribes and grating catchphrases tend to elevate the surrounding material. While the rest of the films where they appear all have liberal doses of foul-mouthed crudity and bathroom ...

  This is not a remake of the famous Vincent Price horror movie of the early 1950s, which helped kick off the 3D craze. All that’s left is the title, the practice of encasing corpses in wax and putting them on display, and a character named Vincent. Although the Price film isn’t a classic, it’s much better than this steadfastly routine slasher movie that, sigh, again pits late teens/early 20s types against a murderous fiend (or here, two of them). On the other hand this movie boasts an exuberantly bizarre climax, a jaw-dropping combination of on-set and CGI effects that’s not like anything else you—or anyone—has ever seen. The movie scores big points for originality in the last 15 minutes or so, but to get to those 15 minutes or so, you have to sit through the whole damned thing. And that’s not much fun. Director Jaume Collet-Serra does a surprisingly good job ...