Throughout Iron Man 3, billionaire playboy philanthropist Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) suffers disorienting panic attacks – a direct result of his involvement in last summer’s The Avengers. Stark, still relatively new to the hero game, is having a difficult time processing the miraculous – and existence-threatening – challenges he faced in New York City: […]
Author: Sean O'Connell
Pain & Gain
On social media, in the days leading up to the release of Pain & Gain, this pitch-black serio-comedy was alternately described by those lucky enough to see it in advance as “Michael Bay’s Boogie Nights” or “Fargo for idiots.” Both are accurate, and they’ll either amp up your excitement for what Bay has concocted, or […]
The Sapphires
War-torn Vietnam, circa 1968, sounds like an offbeat location for a sassy, uplifting musical comedy. But then again, almost everything about Wayne Blair’s The Sapphires would qualify as “offbeat,” which is part of the crowd-pleaser’s numerous charms. Based on true events (which also inspired a stage production back in 2004), The Sapphires starts in rural […]
Stoker
It’d probably be impossible to produce a suspenseful, sensual coming-of-age thriller about the relationship forged between an impressionable, inquisitive teenage girl and her mysterious Uncle Charlie without blatantly calling to mind Alfred Hitchcock’s masterful, somehow-underrated Shadow of a Doubt. So instead of dodging the comparisons, South Korean director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, The Vengeance Trilogy) embraces […]