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 […]
Gangster Squad
An unconvincing facsimile of a crime drama, Gangster Squad, in the end, is merely a podunk action movie in a nice suit. Gangster Squad concerns a group of cops led by John O’Mara (Josh Brolin) who are forced to confront organized crime kingpin Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn), vigilante-style, on account of their police department’s corruption. The […]
The Call
I know you, reader. I know how you feel about things. You’ve often said to yourself “You know, I really want to like The Silence of the Lambs, but I just wish that the serial killer’s motive made no sense, that the smart procedural aspect was replaced by a series of increasingly improbable coincidences, and […]
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
I’m going to make you a promise: this review will be magic-trick-pun free and now, having read that, you can read the rest in peace. Brass tacks: despite its flaws, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is funny, and if you’re a comedy fan you should see it. It’s performers are in top form, Jim Carrey plays […]
Zero Dark Thirty
The hunt for Osama Bin Laden was about more than payback for 9/11. It was qualified vindication for a superpower that seemed significantly less so in light of said overt terrorism. The scope of the World Trade Center attacks warranted a seminal search and destroy, and over the course of the next ten years, two […]
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
The odd thing about the saying “too much of a good thing” is that it acknowledges the fact that, something, in general, is composed of an overabundance of excellence. There’s no qualifier, no additional phrase which augments the sentiment like “…and too much that’s terrible.” The maxim is meant to argue for a surplus, and […]
Side Effects
When he decided to announce his “retirement” from moviemaking (though, as time passes, said declaration appears to be more and more specious), Oscar winner Steven Soderbergh mentioned that he might like to try “new things,” to expand his creative horizons before hanging his auteur hat up for good. In light of his comments, his supposed […]
Repo Man
The scuzz-punk doom comedy of Alex Cox’s 1984 underground touchstone makes for a creepy visitation from a fracturing society. Released at the midpoint of the Reagan era’s celebration of suburban consumerism, it had a gutter-level view of Los Angeles’ bleached-out sprawl and social entropy. Its characters tend toward the feral: repo men who hunt the […]
The Call (Trailer)
Oz the Great and Powerful (Trailer)
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (Trailer)
Texas Chainsaw 3D
Here’s a question for all you novice Hollywood screenwriters. How do you link a storyline set in 1973 with a present day plot circa 2013? Oh, and remember, the characters involved can’t age the prerequisite 40 years and yet still must be directly “related” to those from four decades past. Don’t know? Well, why not […]
Cloud Atlas
We’re all connected. It’s either as a species, as part of a communal society, or as individuals living within universal maxims of love, fear, happiness, and struggle. Over time, over place, we still maintain a link, locked in to our shared humanity, no matter the situations or circumstances. Though it has much more to say […]
Love and Honor (Trailer)
Olympus Has Fallen (Trailer)
Spring Breakers (Trailer)
Lucky Bastard (Trailer)
Les Miserables (2012) (Trailer)
Les Miserables (2012)
Some stories are so bulletproof that even a tuneless Russell Crowe can’t deliver a mortal wound. There are also some so prone to overwrought pathos that even a fearsomely committed Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway, working every creative muscle in their bodies, can’t quite elevate to greatness. In Tom Hooper’s labor-of-love adaptation of the workhorse […]
Jack Reacher
A lunatic sniper fires off rounds from a parking garage, killing five presumably random people on the streets below. Identified by a fingerprint, the former soldier is arrested and promptly interrogated. In lieu of a confession, he scrawls on a piece of paper, “GET JACK REACHER.” Whoa! Who’s Jack Reacher? A former military criminal investigator […]