tom hanks – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

TOY STORY 5 – Review by Susan Granger

June 23, 2026June 24, 2026 Susan Granger Andrew Stanton, animation, disney, gci, joan cusack, pixar, Scarlett Spears, Taylor Swift, tim allen, tom hanks, Toy Story 5

The battle for playtime begins as traditional toys encounter tech in Toy Story 5, reuniting Woody and Buzz Lightyear, along with the rest of the CGI team, 31 years after they first burst onto the silver screen. Shy, eight-year-old Bonnie loves the fantasy world she shares with plucky cowgirl Jessie and her trusty steed, Bullseye, but she has trouble making friends with kids in the neighborhood. Because they don’t play with toys anymore. They’re glued to their digital devices.

Because they don’t play with toys anymore. They’re glued to their digital devices.

So Bonnie’s concerned parents buy her frog-themed LilyPad (Greta Lee), a kid-friendly starter tablet. Sure enough – shortly after joining a chat group, Bonnie is invited to her very first sleepover with girls from her dance class.

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THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME – Review by T.J. Callahan

May 29, 2025May 30, 2025 T. J. Callahan Benedict Cumberbatch, benicio del toro, Bill Murray, bryan cranston, michael cera, scarlett johansson, The Phoenician Scheme, tom hanks, Wes Anderson, Willem Defoe

Award winning filmmaker Wes Anderson is back with another Hollyweird eccentric comedy. Get ready to experience The Phoenician Scheme. Zsa Zsa Korda is a wanted man. He’s on top of every assassin’s hit list with no success. They can’t kill Korda. Benicio del Toro is Korda. He’s a Donald Trump-like tycoon and arms dealer. His latest grand plan is to overhaul the infrastructure of the Middle Eastern region of Phoenicia.

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HERE – Review by Susan Granger

November 4, 2024November 5, 2024 Susan Granger AI, digital de-aging, Here, Kelly Reilly, Michelle Dockery, Ophelia Lovibond, Paul Bettany, Robert Zemeckis, tom hanks

Robert Zemeckis is a courageous, innovative filmmaker. Never resting on his Forrest Gump, Back to the Future, Cast Away laurels, he’s obsessed with technology and its countless possibilities. With the camera firmly fixed on a wide-angle vantage point, his newest film – Here – traces one particular living space through the prism of time. Set on a New England plot of land, Zemeckis’ visual perspective never changes while everything around it does. Beginning before recorded time, Indigenous people lived there. Then came the settlers, including Benjamin Franklin’s estranged son who built a huge colonial manor across the street.

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HERE – Review by T. J. Callahan

October 30, 2024October 31, 2024 T. J. Callahan AI, Here, Kelly Reilly, Paul Bettany, robert zemekis, robin wright, time travel, tom hanks

It’s about time Tom Hanks and Robin Wright got back together with their Forrest Gump director Robert Zemekis for a film about time. They all reunited for the drama/fantasy, Here, and it feels…like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get. Zemekis, known for his technologically creative film, uses AI to take us from the dawn of time to the 21st century in this generational story of families told from a single vantage point. The director successfully de-ages and ages not only Hanks and Wright, but also Kelly Reilly and Paul Bettany along with several other “tribes” in a historical look at how one single location affects those who inhabit it.

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MASTERS OF THE AIR – Review by Susan Granger

March 27, 2024March 31, 2024 Susan Granger Anthony Boyle, apple tv series, Army Air Corps, Austin Butler, Barry Keoghan, Callum Turner, Masters of the Air, Steven Spielberg, tom hanks

From Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, the same production team that gave us Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific (2010), comes a new, nine-part series Masters of the Air about the heroic W.W.II pilots who set the stage for D-Day. The 8th Air Force, 100th Bomber Group – known as the “Bloody Hundredth” because of their high casualty rate – was stationed at England’s Thorpe Abbotts Base. In less than six months in 1943, 34 out of 36 crews were shot down. Their high casualty count was attributed to their orders to fly daylight missions over Nazi-occupied territory, while the British stealthily dropped their bombs at night.

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A MAN CALLED OTTO – Review by Susan Granger

April 3, 2023April 6, 2023 Susan Granger A Man Called Otto, marc forster, Mariana Trevino, rita wilson, tom hanks, Truman Hanks

Tom Hanks stars in A Man Called Otto, a remake of the popular 2015 Swedish film A Man Called Ove which was Oscar-nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. Forcibly retired from his engineering managerial job, widowed Otto Anderson (Hanks) is bitter and resentful. So now he spends the majority of his time patrolling and enforcing the rules of his gated neighborhood, located somewhere in suburban Pennsylvania.

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ELVIS – Review by Susan Kamyab

January 22, 2023January 23, 2023 Susan Kamyab Austin Butler, Baz Luhrmann, biopic, Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis, Elvis Presley, tom hanks

You know his songs, but how well do you the man behind the music? Elvis Presley changed the world of rock and roll, and in Baz Luhrman’s new film, Elvis we get a deeper look at what inspired his sound and moves. Visually, Elvis is breathtaking and with bedazzling effects, but story wise, the film drags. the film is way too long, there were many unnecessary scenes that could have easily been cut to pick up the pace.

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A MAN CALLED OTTO – Review by MaryAnn Johanson

January 18, 2023January 21, 2023 MaryAnn Johanson Man Called Otto, tom hanks

The film never hits on anything that Otto is being truly unreasonable about, which deflates the premise of the story: that Otto is allegedly such a preposterous grump that other people have trouble liking him, but that somehow, their persistent and, I guess, unexpectedly cheerful kindness will eventually bust through his irascibility and save him from his life of angry aloneness.

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A MAN CALLED OTTO – Review by T.J. Callahan

December 27, 2022December 30, 2022 T. J. Callahan A Man Called Otto, Mariana Trevino, tom hanks

Tom Hanks makes every movie better. Okay, okay, not Elvis. But he certainly elevates this remake of an Oscar nominated Swedish film from the New York Times bestselling novel titled A Man Called Ove. A Man Called Otto, without Hanks (and sometimes with Hanks), is simply an old fashioned made for TV movie. Despite its mediocrity, the film conveys heart and good ideas to practice: don’t judge a book by its cover, there’s always something to live for, and treat others as you’d like to be treated. Who can argue with that?!

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PINOCCHIO – Review by Susan Granger

September 21, 2022September 22, 2022 Susan Granger Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Pinocchio, Robert Zemeckis, tom hanks

If you have young children, they’ll probably enjoy Robert Zemeckis’ live-action/animation reboot of Pinocchio, starring Tom Hanks and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. This timeless tale opens with Jiminy Cricket (Gordon-Levitt) singing “When You Wish Upon a Star,” which was first introduced in the 1940 cartoon. After fashioning a boy marionette made of pine, the lonely, widowed woodcarver Geppetto (Tom Hanks) makes a heartfelt wish for a ‘real’ son.

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