This fall shapes up as a battle of reality vs. fantasy. The reality is a movie industry that continues to unlearn lessons never easily learned in Hollywood: how to create and simultaneously point stockholders toward new work, new intellectual properties, new storytelling for a sustainable future.

There should be a word for a surprise that isn't really a surprise. An unprise? A surplunk?

When actress Maria Bello visited the West African nation of Benin in 2015, she learned the history of the Agojie, an all-female military regiment from the Kingdom of Dahomey (and the inspiration for Wakanda’s Dora Milaje from “Black Panther”). Recognizing the cinematic potential for this sto…

Idris Elba is going to test his box-office appeal as a lead in a big, brawny thriller with the upcoming film "Beast," in which he plays a dad protecting his two teenage daughters from a rampaging lion in South Africa.

It’s August, which means it’s hot, and if you’re not spending your time in an actual swimming pool, you may want to beat the heat with movies about swimming pools. Luckily, there are some great ones to suggest.

The DC Comics Cinematic Universe has mostly taken a dark, gritty approach to blockbuster comic book movies. But perhaps there’s another way to explore the world of the Justice League that’s a bit more warm, cuddly and friendly? That’s the thesis presented by the animated movie “DC League of …

In “Nope,” writer/director Jordan Peele presents us with a big, shiny summer blockbuster — a cowboys and aliens riff built from the DNA of sci-fi spectacles of yore — and then proceeds to vivisect the very notion of a summer blockbuster before our eyes. He wants us to question the nature of …

Disney has made big business mining content from content, with spinoffs and sequels and multiverses dancing through multiplexes and streaming apps. “Lightyear,” the latest Disney/Pixar animated film, has been extracted from the much-beloved “Toy Story” universe, but it’s a bit unique. It’s s…

Nostalgia as escapism is ubiquitous. But what if nostalgia could be a force for good? Not an inelegant poke in the dopamine receptors, but rather, transcendent, even galvanizing, as it is in the case of Joseph Kosinski’s “Top Gun: Maverick,” a legacy sequel that that allows the viewer to lux…

WENATCHEE — The Wenatchee Valley Museum & Cultural Center is showing “The Winter’s Tale” at 7 p.m. Thursday as part of its Environmental Film Series.

At the end of Robert Eggers' first movie, 2015's "The Witch," Anya Taylor-Joy's character joins an eerie group of witches in the woods and — in a shocking and subversive moment — lifts off into the air, free from gender roles and gravity.

We’re now midway through the five-movie “Fantastic Beasts” series, a sort of prequel/cousin to the Harry Potter world created by J.K. Rowling, and the most enthusiasm I can muster is that it’s all lovely to look at.

Fall movies are a thing, winter movies are definitely a thing, but spring movies? Spring is a distinctive season — not my favorite, but hey, we all do our own thing — and it’s a little harder to pin down as a distinctive movie look. What is a spring movie, really, but a summer movie with a l…

How charming is “The Lost City”? So charming that the villain is played by Daniel Radcliffe. So charming that it leaves you wondering why nobody has asked Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum to host the Oscars, or make an “Ocean’s 8” sequel in which he’s the mark, or team up for a series of PS…

Leonard (Mark Rylance), the proprietor of the finest bespoke suiting shop in 1956 Chicago, wants to make one thing very clear: he’s not a tailor, he’s a cutter. “Anyone with a needle and thread can call themselves a tailor,” he sniffs. No, Leonard trained for years on legendary Savile Row in…

Sometimes you have the right actor in the right part, but the wrong movie. Such is the case with “Cyrano,” Joe Wright’s handsome musical version of Edmond Rostand’s 19th-century play “Cyrano de Bergerac” (which has frequently been adapted for film; my favorite version being the 1987 Steve Ma…

These days — let us hope, for not too much longer — a movie has to be something special to lure an audience into a theater; something you just can't wait to see, something that would be diminished if watched on a screen at home. Unfortunately, Kenneth Branagh's "Death on the Nile" is not one…

SPOKANE — When Seth M. Holmes was growing up on Spokane's South Hill during the 1980s, the Lewis & Clark High School graduate dreamed of becoming a physician or an anthropologist, not a filmmaker.

Maybe by the end of 2022 we can hit the multiplexes without masks? In the meantime, here are some cinematic offerings in the new year that might make it worth heading to the theaters. Dates are, perhaps more than ever in this still-pandemicked world, subject to change; streaming dates, where…

Thanks to the pandemic, all of us spent a good chunk of 2021 — maybe even all of it — not able to see the newest movies in theaters. So while I saw and reviewed a decent handful of movies, particularly in the past few months, it really wasn’t enough to make a “Top 10” list meaningful. But le…

There is only one word to describe Steven Spielberg’s remake/revival of “West Side Story”: dazzling. As Janusz Kaminski’s wildly liberated camera swirls around the flying limbs of the Sharks, Jets and everyone caught in the middle, set to the familiar strains of Leonard Bernstein’s music, th…

Entertainment Weekly compiled a list of every original holiday movie that is set to come out this year on streaming and TV networks and the number is mindboggling: 146. And that is likely a low number.

Tom Holland’s Spider-Man has awesome superpowers — and soon we will get to see him use the one where he dances.

After you’ve finished eating your turkey leftovers and watching “House of Gucci” (and looks like a popcorn fest), brace yourself: This year, unlike last year, lots of big movies are headed for the multiplexes for the holiday season. Here are 10 that might be worth getting up from the couch —…

WENATCHEE — Mission Ridge Ski & Board Resort is part of a film that made its debut this week about independent ski areas around the world.

The new Netflix animated series “Maya and the Three” has allowed its top voice actor, Zoe Saldaña, to reconnect with her Latin roots as well as her birth name.

In 2018, horror mogul Jason Blum revived one of the longest-running horror franchises, “Halloween,” inviting filmmaker David Gordon Green to take a spin through Haddonfield. Blum got the whole gang back together, enlisting “Halloween” auteur John Carpenter to compose one of his inimitable sy…

We all have our own relationship with James Bond. Mine goes back to being high school age, giggling over popcorn as Roger Moore said wisecracky things and drank martinis and drove too fast and … well, I was never quite sure what exactly Bond was doing over there in the British Secret Service…

Macho is the name of a rooster, an expert cockfighter and a plucky companion to a wayward teenager named Rafo (Eduardo Minett). Rafo, in turn, finds himself playing sidekick to Mike Milo, a faded rodeo star played with a familiar dyspeptic wince by Clint Eastwood, now 91. Making their way fr…

When it comes to the Marvel movies, the hope is that the talented directors they hire to helm each project can bring a bit of their own sensibility to the proceedings. Whether it’s Taika Waititi’s goofy humor that underscores “Thor: Ragnarok” or Ryan Coogler’s sense of soulful sorrow in “Bla…

In the new “Candyman,” Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Teyonah Parris tell a scary story that explores real-world frights.

Skyscrapers loom upside down out of the fog, drifting by from an odd perspective, as if from the point of view of someone on a gurney, or perhaps a spectral presence regarding these buildings occupying land that’s been stolen, developed, appropriated, allocated, gentrified and redeveloped ag…

Henry Golding wasn’t toying around while preparing to bring to life a classic G.I. Joe hero in the new “Snake Eyes” film.

Adam Robitel’s 2019 B-movie horror flick “Escape Room” had all the auspices of a flash in the pan: early January release and a gimmicky premise based around a live entertainment trend. “Escape Room” was just that: a series of high-stakes, life-or-death puzzles, but thanks to the cast and cha…

Even though it was delayed for over a year, the release of a documentary film about Central Washington’s Gorge Amphitheatre — a film about music and the sheer joy of togetherness — seems right on time after all. “Enormous: The Gorge Story” opens July 21 in theaters, including Wenatchee’s Gat…

Ever since Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), better known as Black Widow, kicked-boxed her way into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, fans have been clamoring for a standalone movie, and for good reason. She’s astonishingly lethal but also incredibly human, with a dark and mysterious backs…

Some say that women marry versions of their fathers, and I guess you could argue "The Tomorrow War" is evidence of that.

What a ride it’s been for the “The Fast and the Furious” franchise. Now spanning 20 years and nine films, this soap opera of motor fuel and melodrama has defied logic, physics and death again and again while weaving an intricate tapestry of a cinematic text that’s filled with callbacks, came…

Starring Kevin Hart as a widower trying to raise his young daughter, “Fatherhood” is an affable dramedy that lacks any real tension or drive. In a more dramatic turn than his usual manic comedic roles, Hart shows promise but isn’t quite there yet to craft something truly rounded, emotional a…

There were two long waits that had to be endured before Lin-Manuel Miranda and Philadelphia-born playwright Quiara Alegria Hudes could bring their Tony-winning musical “In the Heights” to the screen.

Good luck planning ahead to see movies this summer; the schedules (and the theatrical versus streaming strategies) are still changing rapidly. But here are a dozen movies I’m keeping an eye on, and hoping to see on the biggest screen I can find.

“Not for honor. Not for country. For his wife and child.” Along with Harrison Ford’s scowl, those words dominated the poster for the 1992 film “Patriot Games,” the first of two Ford outings as novelist Tom Clancy’s all-purpose avenging angel and CIA analyst Jack Ryan. (The latest Ryan, now s…

“I want to see the Eiffel Tower, then die,” replies Frances when a customs officer asks what she plans to do in Paris in “French Exit.”

A Wenatchee Valley duo has made a documentary film in an attempt to expand what people see as being outdoorsy.