Inferno

   The first two movie adaptations of the popular Dan Brown novels (“Da Vinci Code”, “Angels & Demons”) haven’t done much. The first movie was ripe with controversy and made tons of money, but the second one, while still making money, didn’t quite light the world on fire as people would have liked to hope. Now, seven years after the second movie, we have “Inferno”, the latest tale featuring everyone’s favorite symbologist, Robert Langdon (played by everyone’s favorite actor, Tom Hanks), as he’s on the run and looking for a way to stop half of the world’s population from dying. How? Or better yet, why? Well, the movie thankfully doesn’t try to make too much sense of it all and for that reason alone, it’s far better than its predecessors. This time around, director Ron Howard and company all feel like they’re on the same page, delivering a movie that doesn’t try to inform its audience as much as it wants to entertain them. That’s perfectly fine for me. The intellectuals who may want to learn something new and ground-breaking about the great medieval poet Dante himself will probably have to read the book.

3/5 Stars

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

   While it was seen as a disappointment commercially as well as a critically, “Jack Reacher” was a perfectly fine old-school thriller that reminded me of the good old days when mainstream, big-budget movies cared more about the story and less about the flashy stunts and special-effects. Now, nearly four years later, we’ve got its sequel, “Never Go Back”, featuring the always compelling Tom Cruise in the title role once again, having to solve a case and save his life… again. It’s all routine and predictable, but still fun. Though it never quite reaches the height of its predecessor, “Never Go Back” is still an entertaining, if sometimes confusing thriller that doesn’t always know how to connect the dots, but does know how to show an explosion or fight. Which, in the action-world, is all you need. •

2.5/5