Movie of the Week: ‘Collateral’

Tom Cruise turned 59 years young on July 3, and AHFW is celebrating with a fantastic Cruise performance in director Michael Mann’s thriller, “Collateral”. “Collateral” (2004) – Mann’s crime story runs all over the vast, sprawling City of Angeles into the wee hours of the evening, but at its narrative’s core, the film pits two men in a taxing confrontation, who sit just a few feet from one another. A cab driver, Max (Jamie Foxx), picks up a real estate executive, Vincent (Tom Cruise), in front of a towering downtown…

“Pirates” provides some fun and overwhelms with overdone, bloated special effects

“Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” –  Javier Bardem has recently played a pair of truly iconic villains.  As Anton Chigurh in “No Country for Old Men” (2007), this truly unrelenting boogieman sometimes uses a silent captive bolt pistol to murder his prey at close range throughout west Texas.   Bardem also plays Silva in “Skyfall” (2012), and this former MI6 operative returns to haunt and kill his former boss, M (Judy Dench), while James Bond (Daniel Craig) attempts thwart this memorable baddie’s very personal attack. In each…