Sometimes, the best cinematic advice is to leave well enough alone. Sure, some can make a go of revamping previous classics, but for the most part, when you want to revive a flagging franchise, you better be careful less you anger the original fanbase and underwhelm the current crop of potential devotees. Take James Wan […]
Author: Bill Gibron
Suburbicon
It’s seems like a cinematic no-brainer. George Clooney, directing a script by his buddies in off-kilter crime, Joel and Ethan Coen, and featuring Matt Damon as a ’50s father dealing with the dark underbelly of white flight. It should be boffo. After all, Clooney and the Coens made O Brother Where Art Thou?, a collaboration […]
Thank You For Your Service
We stand and salute them, placing hand over heart and getting teary eyed whenever they are mentioned or the National Anthem blares across a sports stadium. But after the celebration, after the social media shout outs and viral video feels, what becomes of our veterans. Why aren’t they a priority among the populace? Why do […]
Geostorm
Let’s face it. Ever since Irwin Allen passed from this mortal coil and took his terrifically tacky disaster films with him (The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno), the only person capable of capturing his campy kitsch craziness in the wake of an Armageddon is Roland Emmerich. From Independence Day and the brilliant 2012, no one […]
Boo 2! A Madea Halloween
It’s time to stop raking Tyler Perry and his urban melodramatics over the critic coals. Granted, he’s not a terrific filmmaker and his plotting can best be described as plain and potboiler, but you cannot deny that the man knows his audience and knows how to entertain them. He’s a populist, playing to the crowd, […]
The Snowman
A serial killer drama set in a snowy, scary Scandinavian outback, directed by the man who made the brilliant vampire reimagining, Let the Right One In. A cast which includes an Oscar nom (Michael Fassbender), a winner (J.K. Simmons), and stellar supporting players like Val Kilmer, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Toby Jones. So why then does […]
Happy Death Day
It sounds like the kind of high concept claptrap that left a massive stain on the ’80s. Back before superheroes and shared universes became the thing of massive Hollywood box office, studios concocted outsized ideas designed to peak audience curiosity and breathe life into lagging career fortunes. So when you hear that Happy Death Day […]
Marshall
They say that if you find the right moment, the circumstance or the situation that set the tone for their entire life, you can learn a lot about a person. You don’t have to have all the details, no need to follow them from cradle all the way up until the grave. No, just concentrate […]
The Foreigner
It was only a matter of time before Jackie Chan was forced into one of the familiar Hollywood action tropes. His entire career has been built on bucking convention, by adding comedy and heart to his otherwise Herculean stunt work, and when he is in his element, he is electric. But age is finally catching […]
The Mountain Between Us
If books (and adaptations) like Alive have taught us anything, it’s that plane crash victims, especially ones trapped in the snow covered mountains of remote regions, will resort to extremes beyond personal human endurance just to merely survive (cough, cough–cannibalism–cough, cough). The new film from Hany Abu-Assad (Omar, The Idol), The Mountain Between Us, doesn’t […]
Blade Runner 2049
Science fiction can be divided along two distinct lines–call it the Star Trek vs. Star Wars ideal. The former focuses on ideas. The latter is all about dog fights in space. One brings social commentary to the speculative genre. The other deals in cliffhangers and abundant action. Clearly, Lucas’ legacy has been more successful at […]
Flatliners (2017)
It is a strange cinematic world indeed when someone decides to remake a Joel Schumacher film. The man responsible for such onscreen mediocrity as D.C. Cab, St. Elmo’s Fire, and Batman and Robin is not really the kind of hack you revisit. Instead, he’s the type of director that you hope to forget, especially when […]
American Made
What is it with Tom Cruise? Sure, his adoration of Scientology certainly rubs people the wrong way, but he’s been in so many memorable movies and big time box office hits that his personal beliefs shouldn’t effect his star power. And yet, every time another project is announced, critics and pundits pull out the same […]
Kingsman: The Golden Circle
Matthew Vaughn clearly missed his calling. His style would have perfectly meshed with the insane Looney Tunes from the ‘40s and ‘50s. Put another way, if Fritz Freleng had dropped the pen and ink to make a live action James Bond film, the results would be something akin to Kingsman: The Golden Circle. If Michael […]
The Lego Ninjago Movie
When it arrived in theaters back in 2014, Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s The LEGO Movie lived and died by its engaging earworm theme song — “Everything Is Awesome” — and for once, the sentiment was 100% on point. The film was fantastic, and lead to a new toy-based franchise that families could get behind. […]
Stronger
Four years ago, it was the terror attack that rocked the nation, if not the world. On April 15th, as runners were crossing the finish line as part of the annual Boston Marathon, two homemade bombs exploded. When the smoke cleared and the victims were counted, three people were dead, dozens more were injured, some […]
Brad’s Status
When we’re young, we are sold a basic bill of goods. If we believe in ourselves and work hard, we can be anything we want. Of course, that’s not necessarily true. Sometimes, we have to settle. Maybe life throws us a curveball we can’t conquer. Perhaps there are roadblocks that set us back over and […]
American Assassin
The travails of a professional killer are typically the stuff of sound cinematic entertainment. As long as you deliver the action, and do so in a satisfying manner, you’re capable of keeping the audience with you no matter how long your narrative runs. But what if your story merely meanders, aimlessly moving from killing to […]
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
If eye candy were actually fattening, Luc Besson’s latest effort, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, would make every viewer morbidly obese. There has never been such a mind-blowing mediocrity. You’ve heard about style over substance? How about pure vision over anything remotely close to logical. There hasn’t been a movie this obsessed […]
mother!
There are few filmmakers as audacious as Darren Aronofsky. From his black and white break out Pi to his twisted takes on drugs (Requiem for a Dream), immortality (The Fountain), fame fading (The Wrestler) and the blindness of faith (Noah), he is not known for his subtlety or shading. Instead, he makes big bold pronouncements […]