No one recognized Rick Famuyiwa when he strolled up to the Ladera Park basketball courts on a bright weekday afternoon. In January, the lanky, 41-year-old director’s new comedy, Dope — a crowd-pleasing high school flick about nerds who dress like Kid ‘N Play, dream of going to Harvard and bash…

The first time we cry, as a newborn, might be the purest emotion we ever feel. We sob — a raw mess of tears and terror — and a big human rushes to give comfort. Mentally, the connection is made: My feelings trigger a response, be it hugs or milk…

Never Say ‘Not Her’ Again In Spy, Melissa McCarthy triumphs for the Susans everywhere. The Melissa McCarthy of Spy is different from the one who rose to prominence by shitting in a sink. Bridesmaids scored her an Oscar nomination, and for the ceremony McCarthy donned a glamorous rose gown with…

The San Andreas fault stretches 810 miles up the Pacific coast, roughly the length of a dozen Dwayne “The Rock” Johnsons lying end to end. When it rumbles, we’ll need all 12 of him to spring into action — although, as Brad Peyton’s San Andreas warns, that still won’t be…

Diane Keaton thinks her new film is delightfully ironic. Richard Loncraine’s 5 Flights Up is the latest in that burgeoning genre, Retiree Real Estate Romantic Comedy, where cool, gray-haired New Yorkers realize they can barely afford to live in the city where they fell in love. Keaton plays a teacher…

I  dread explaining man-child dramedies to the ghosts of the dead. “You see, Grandpa, after your time, a generation paralyzed by the economy and indecision stopped growing up — and started churning out indie movies justifying why not.” In the ’40s, men fought wars at 18. In 1967, Benjamin Braddock…

Avengers: Age of Ultron is a complicated, ticking machine — a cuckoo clock under attack. Returning helmer Joss Whedon is earnestly trying to make a movie out of a bag of bolts: six stars, nine cameos, three enemies, and at least 10 films to go before the climactic Avengers: Infinity…

Ex Machina is an egghead thriller with a scary selling point: Unlike Liam Neeson shooting up half of Boston, this actually could be taking place right now. It’s a smart film about the shrinking divide between man and robot. It’s also a hoot, an anti-comedy where all of the jokes…

The Longest Ride is Nicholas Sparks’ most ambitious novel. Instead of one couple, there’s two — and he’s even stretched out of his blond/Southern/Christian comfort zone to make the older pair Jewish. For balance, and for pandering to the powerful conservative audience who made American Sniper a megahit, his young…

Victor Levin’s 5 to 7 is a romantic drama about a young writer in Manhattan that could be a superhero flick if its leading man wore tights. It’s as much a triumph of boyish wish fulfillment as Peter Parker swinging on skyscrapers. Brian (Anton Yelchin) is one of those suffering…

Noah Baumbach has always had a dash of hypochondria, but in the past few years, his doctor’s visits have changed. “If you’re a worrier like I am, or Ben,” he says, referring to Ben Stiller, the star of his 2010 movie Greenberg, “you’re used to going, ‘Is this something that…

Get Hard, Etan Cohen’s comedy about a white stockbroker who hires a black man to prepare him for a 10-year stretch in San Quentin, is like a spoon that’s almost-but-not-yet sharpened into a shiv. With just a little more effort, it could kill. Judging by the poster, in which star…

Jaume Collet-Serra’s Run All Night, a shoot-’em-up about an out-to-pasture hit man desperate to keep his boss and best friend from whacking his son, is humid with testosterone. It’s the sort of film where a woman accidentally caught by the camera practically apologizes and scurries away from the lens. When…

“Mark Twain said boxing is the only sport where a slave, if he’s successful, can rub shoulders with royalty,” says former heavyweight Mike Tyson, who once knocked out 19 opponents in a row. “Can you imagine that? Just by fighting another human being, he can meet a king, a prince,…

Start at the feet and pan up Adam Sandler: the sneakers, the pants that never quite fit, the sloped shoulders, the furrowed brow and world-weary sulk. He’s a cartoon man drawn the same in every movie, whether he’s in a lonely walk-up or a McMansion crammed with kids. Sandler plays…

It’s an ironic truth that directors fascinated by robots tend to make inhuman movies. From Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner to last year’s Transcendence, these stories that ponder the gap between man and machine often reveal filmmakers unsure of where they fit in — they get so involved in the question…

Sport is a natural metaphor for war. Two sides in two colors face each other on a field, each with their pride and their physical safety at risk. Their leaders scheme plans of attack, drawing arrows toward the enemy’s flank. And backing the teams in the stands — or, more…

If Grace Kelly had been raised by coyotes, she might have stalked the screen like Focus’ Margot Robbie, a va-va-voom blonde with bite. Robbie is too beautiful to play normal, too sly to play nice. Miscast as a shy saint in Craig Zobel’s upcoming Sundance hit Z for Zachariah, she…

Five years ago, four losers passed out in a jacuzzi, boiled back to 1986, healed their past wounds, rocked out to Poison, and returned to their timeline as gods. Thusly, Hot Tub Time Machine director Steve Pink was hailed as a minor deity: He’d taken a dumber-than-huffing-hairspray premise and made…

Shove off, John Hughes. The DUFF, a high school comedy by Ari Sandel, opens by declaring that The Breakfast Club’s social categories are, like, way passé. Explains lead Bianca (Mae Whitman), “Jocks play video games, princesses are on antidepressants, and geeks rule the world.” Today, be ye goth kid, science…

Ten years ago, Wellington, New Zealand, was less welcoming of vampires. When Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, two unknown comedians, walked the streets in velvet frocks and ruffles for a 2005 sketch, dudes would drive by and scream homophobic slurs. Says Clement, “We were constantly abused.” Over the next decade,…