"Hustlers" saves all of its tricks for the end

Everything is beautiful in John Crowley's adaptation of "The Goldfinch," even the grilled cheese sandwich that a kind stranger makes for a boy who has just lost his mother.

Market it right, and you can get people to pay for literally anything these days. Especially in Manhattan.

In the next few weeks I'll be adding my money to the $93 million that "It: Chapter 2" took in on its first weekend of release. Even though I've read Stephen King's 1,100-page tome a couple of times, I still need to rewatch "It: Chapter 1" before I see the sequel, just to make sure I'm up-to-date.

It can be a cheesy thing when a novel is split up and spread out over a handful of films, but Stephen King's "It" is not one of those books.

Flipping channels through a stupor of boredom on Sunday night, I ran across "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." I have seen all the Potter movies, read all the Potter books. While I think the books are by far the best of the two, I still enjoyed the movies. So I stayed on "Goblet of Fire."

Traditionally, weddings usually lead to some fun and games in the bedroom for the happy and exhausted couple. In the new horror-thriller "Ready or Not," that's definitely true - but the games aren't always fun.

Getting in shape and putting your life together usually, at the movies, passes in a montage. But for many, the non-Rocky legions of us, such transformations require more than inspiring theme music and lifting weights in the snow.

There is a certain mindless pleasure in the "Fallen" movies.

The 12-year-old protagonists of "Good Boys" have mastered the use of lingo like "lit" and "burn," but they are foggier on just exactly what a tampon is and swear that a nymphomaniac is someone who has sex on land and on sea. They are tantalizingly close to young adulthood and yet tragically far away.

After starring roles for Freddie Mercury ("Bohemian Rhapsody"), Elton John ("Rocketman") and the Beatles ("Yesterday"), it's Bruce Springsteen's turn to join the mixtape that the movies have lately become.

It's hard to have huge expectations for a movie called "The Angry Birds Movie 2." After all, it's not even a movie based on a smartphone game. It's a SEQUEL to a movie based on a smartphone game.

I didn't know it until last week, but Allan Arkush might be the guy I've always wanted to be when I grow up.

The idea behind "Where'd You Go, Bernadette " is tantalizing — a woman goes missing and her 15-year-old daughter tries to piece together where she went.

The comedy about a man who tries to rise in his company by letting its executives use his apartment for trysts is next up in the Bobby Stone Film Series on Saturday, Aug. 17, at 7 p.m. in the Tivoli Theatre, 709 Broad St.

"Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" is, likably, a Frankenstein of a movie that stitches together tales from the cultishly beloved 1980s book series by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated by Stephen Gammell.

It happens in even the best kitchens: You bring together top-quality ingredients and a promising recipe, but somehow the end result comes out tasting wrong, just wrong.

The film adaptation of "The Art of Racing in the Rain" seems to have been designed by algorithm to maximize appeal for a certain demographic of women aged around 30 and up.

The second in a trio of classic films will be screened in Miller Park, 950 Market St., on Wednesday, Aug. 14.

Well hello, Dolly! It's nice to have a movie musical back on the big screen where it belongs.

Samuel L. Jackson isn't the only Chattanooga, or even Tennessee, product that makes appearances in films by Quentin Tarantino.

Two Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cinematic classics are next in the Bobby Stone Film Series at the Tivoli Theatre, 709 Broad St.

After the success of the outdoor screening earlier this year of "The Creature From the Black Lagoon," the Chattanooga Film Festival will present the 2019 CFF Summer Film Series at Miller Park. The trio of films to be shown are among the best examples of their respective genres ever made.