Talking Killer News Today

In a way, the veterans of the two sides in a war have more in common with each other than with the civilians back home. They share the same terrain and the same experience, and by risking their lives in the process of trying to kill each other, they form an indelible bond.

"Sneakers" tells the story of a legal break-in team - industrial espionage experts who you hire to break into your bank so you can test your security systems. The team is led by Bishop (Robert Redford), who, like all of its members, keeps a low profile because of illegal activities in the past - in his case, tampering with a computer system in the 1960s. When a government agency comes to Redford's group with a request for a job that falls outside the law, it can apply muscle becaus...

At the end of this film there is a montage of sad people holding photographs of their grandparents, parents, husbands, wives or children, who were killed during the so-called Five Days of War between Russia and Georgia. It is unforgivable to borrow human grief and evoke it to lend weight to an action movie scarcely deeper than a Michael Bay extravaganza. Here you will hear a great deal about the war, but learn not so very much, and all of that from the Georgian point of view. Mind you, I'm n...

Now streaming on: "Sorry, Haters" is a film that begins in intrigue, develops in fascination and ends in a train wreck. It goes spectacularly wrong, and yet it contains such a gripping performance by Robin Wright Penn that it succeeds, in a way, despite itself. To see great work is a reason to see an imperfect movie, and to observe how the movie loses its way may be useful even if its frustrating. My inclination was to give the film a negative star rating, but that would mean recommending you n...

Now streaming on: "Push" has vibrant cinematography and decent acting, but Im blasted if I know what its about. Oh, I understand how the characters are paranormals, and how theyre living in a present that was changed in the past, among enemies who are trying to change the future. I know they can read minds and use telekinesis to move things. I know theyre a later generation of a Nazi experiment gone wrong, and the U.S. Army wants them for super-soldiers. But thats all simply the usual horsefeat...

James Bond has battled evil commies and megalomaniac madmen; perhaps it was only a matter of time until he faced off against a media baron -- the only sort of figure in todays world that actually does seek global domination. His enemy in "Tomorrow Never Dies” wants to start a war in order to create headlines for the launch of his latest news channel. Just imagine what Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner would like to do to each other and imagine either one of them doing it to the Chinese, and youll...

"Last Action Hero" is about the same subject as almost every other feature film ever made: The possibility of blurring the line between the audience and the screen. We go to the movies so that we can vicariously live the lives of the characters who loom so glamorously above us, and the movies know that. Every moment of every shot exists with the full consciousness of the fourth invisible wall dividing the characters from their watchers in the dark. Early in "Last Action Hero," a small boy is wa...