3 The Hard Way By Gary Phillips Down & Out Books 295 pages First before digging into this book’s trio of excellent pulp yarns, we want to tip our fedora to Down & Out Books. A fairly new publishing house, the quality of their recent titles has been excellent and
A HANDFUL OF HELL Classic War & Adventure Stories By Robert F. Dorr New Texture Books 323 pages At the height of the classic pulp era of the 1930s and 40s, variety was the name of the game as magazine racks were inundated with titles covering every conceivable genre of
By Ashley Pauls Box Office Buzz After seeing the 49 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes for “X-Men: Apocalypse,” I walked into the theater with significantly lower expectations than I had originally. Critics have called it an overstuffed, “middling” chapter in the X-Men franchise, and I was afraid it would become
HUNT AT WORLD’S END (A Gabriel Hunt Novel) By Nicholas Kaufman Titan Books 269 pages We recently participated in an on-line round table forum on how to avoid clichés when writing mystery fiction. Webster’s defines the word as “…a hackneyed expression or idea.” Hackneyed in that it has been repeated
By Ashley Pauls/Box Office Buzz Iron Man may be the resident bad boy of the Avengers, but he is practically a saint compared to Deadpool, the Marvel Universe’s famous (or infamous) “Merc with a Mouth.” Deadpool doesn’t play by anybody’s rules but his own, and even those are subject to
By Ashley Pauls/Box Office Buzz The wait is finally over and the good news is, Star Wars fans, this is the movie you’ve been waiting for. “The Force Awakens” captures the epic grandeur of the original trilogy while also ushering in an exciting new era of Star Wars storytelling. It’s
Hunger Games victor and rebel hero Katniss Everdeen’s journey comes to an end in “Mockingjay – Part 2,” the final film in the Hunger Games saga. We’ve watched Katniss deal with the aftermath of winning the Hunger Games, where a cruel post-apocalyptic government forces teenagers to fight to the death
“Skyfall” is, admittedly, a tough act to follow. The 2012 James Bond film brought in more than a billion dollars at the box office worldwide and received rave reviews from both fans and critics. So it was perhaps inevitable that the follow-up, “Spectre,” would struggle to reach those same heights.
By Ashley Pauls/Box Office Buzz “The only thing stronger than fear is hope.” That may be a quote from “The Hunger Games,” but it could just as easily apply to the new movie “The Martian.” In the film, astronaut Mark Watney finds himself stranded on Mars after the rest of
By Ashley Pauls Box Office Buzz We’re used to Bond, Bourne and the “Mission Impossible” team: modern cinematic spies who rely on cutting-edge technology to uncover secrets and bring down criminal organizations. The battlefield is often a digital one, and the side with the better technology is more likely to
By Ashley Pauls Box Office Buzz After almost 20 years and five movies, it seems inevitable that a franchise would start running out of steam. However, that certainly isn’t the case with “Mission: Impossible.” The latest chapter in the spy franchise, “Rogue Nation,” feels just as fresh and exciting as
By Ashley Pauls Box Office Buzz On paper, I’m sure “Ant-Man” always looked like a tough sell. A superhero who discovers a suit that gives him the power to shrink to the size of an insect and control an army of ants isn’t an easy concept to pull off onscreen.
