Prisoners (2013) PHOTO : WILSON WEBB/WARNER BROS/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION Hugh Jackman takes matters into his own hands as Keller Dover in Denis Villeneuve’s crime thriller, Prisoners. He plays a father whose young daughter and her friend are suddenly abducted. Thrown into a tailspin investigation alongside detective Jake Gyllenhaal, the desperate father pursues leads with torture interrogation strategies […]

Taken (2008) PHOTO : TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION Liam Neeson has become the poster paternal hero with “a particular set of skills,” thanks to the Luc Besson-produced trilogy of thrillers. His career-pivoting turn as Bryan Mills begins with Pierre Morel’s installment, in which Mills’ teenage daughter is kidnapped in France by human traffickers for sexual slavery, […]

John Q (2002) PHOTO : NEW LINE/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION With hopes of securing a transplant for his dying son after a health insurance snafu, Denzel Washington as the title character puts an emergency room on deadly lockdown in Nick Cassavetes’ thriller. Heartwarming and heart-pounding, the film shows a father’s final plea to provide for his child.   […]

The Set-Up was the last film Wise made for RKO, and he named it his favorite of the pictures he directed for the studio, as well as one of his top ten of his career.

The bone, hurled into the air, becomes a spaceship, but the leap forward is not necessarily a great or a positive leap. Kubrick’s vision of space travel is spectacular but ultimately deadly. While the ape shows a manic joy in its discovery, the space travelers show neither joy nor sorrow, there’s no overt display of […]