When Chronicle came to theaters earlier this year, it instantly drew comparisons to Katsuhiro Otomo’s landmark anime film, Akira. Despite their deeper cultural differences, both films invite comparison, as each of them features an unstable character who is bestowed with incredible powers, but the inner rage these characters experience consumes them, leading to widespread death…
While I enjoy Gremlins, I actually prefer Gremlins 2. The first one is a bit on the mean-spirited side, luring the kids in with a cute little creature before blindsiding them with disturbing violence, as well as a terrifying monologue from Phoebe Cates that informs you that Santa doesn’t exist in the nastiest way possible. Gremlins 2,…
This past weekend Marvel’s The Avengers brought in $200.3 million box office bucks, shattering the record for biggest opening weekend of all-time! It easily passed Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II, which grossed $169 million last year. If you’re not a fan of Joss Whedon, you will be after this movie. Marvel’s The Avengers was…
Bravo, Soderbergh. Too often do action directors feel compelled to get in the middle of the action and jiggle the camera around in a half-assed attempt to put the audience “in the action” these days. The result is almost always muddy, confused, and ultimately boring. Soderbergh didn’t have a straight-up action film to his name…
The Five-Year Engagement feels five hours too long, is fifteen jokes short of a punch line and worst of all, a script so poorly put together, you aren’t quite sure what’s going on during the majority of the film. Written by Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller, who brought us the hilarious and charming Forgetting Sarah Marshall, I…
The Pirates! Band of Misfits **** (out of 4 stars) Starring: Hugh Grant, David Tennant, Imelda Staunton, Brendan Gleeson, and Salma Hayek Directed by: Peter Lord Rated PG (mild action, rude humor and some language) You know a family film is doing it right when they make it look effortless-yet-awe-inspiring, when it makes the parade…
It never bodes well when directors revisit one of their classics to mine more material from it decades after the fact, and it’s especially bizarre when it happens in the low-budget world of cult horror. A recent example is Dario Argento’s dreadful Mother of Tears, a cap off to the supposed trilogy he started in…
Goon *** (out of 4 stars) Starring: Seann William Scott, Alison Pill, Eugene Levy, Directed by: Michael Dowse Rated: R (violence, strong language, sexual content and drug use) In Goon, actor Seann William Scott gets to stretch as an actor, playing improbable ice hockey player Doug Glatt — a character who is sort of the…
I saw Steve McQueen’s Shame in a theater full of elderly couples. I knew going in the movie was nice, hard NC-17, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the onslaught of wall-to-wall screwing that was in store for me, making me feel almost as uncomfortable in the theater as the moment Robert De Niro takes…
They’re pulling a Darren. Like the unexplained replacement of actor Dick York by actor Dick Sargent on the 1960s sitcom Bewitched (and like the constant recasting of James Bond), a completely new cast will portray the larger-than-life characters in Atlas Shrugged The Movie: Part 2, based on Ayn Rand’s epic novel of the productive vs….
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