THE WOLFMAN hearkens back with great hope and poor follow-through to Universal’s classic horror films. There is much that is improved in this retelling of the original 1941 flick, and much that suffers a surfeit of technology. The story follows the original’s arc, with Lawrence Talbot suffering the bite of a werewolf, a band of… Read More »
YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER
Woody Allen revisits questions of ethics and morals as lived in the real world in YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER. His characters bounce and bobble their way through a world without answers, in which they attempt to seize happiness from the jaws of despair with varying degrees of success. The central question is… Read More »
RITE, THE
THE RITE forges boldly into some interesting theological territories without ever quite making the trip as interesting as the ideas behind it. What begins as an intriguing consideration of how evil can insinuate itself upon even the most innocent of souls becomes, in a breathtakingly short period of time, a wordy symposium. Concepts and theories… Read More »
THOR
THOR is an exuberant blend of spectacle and fun. More in keeping with vintage Saturday morning movie serials than the fantasy and sci-fi blockbusters of more recent date, it is, nonetheless, not lacking in nifty special effects to showcase its stalwart heroes, black-hearted evil-doers, and the fine comic relief in the form of a slacker… Read More »
NOAH
In the old days, biblical epics were produced as much to have an excuse for prurient excess as for the moral lesson to be imparted by the retelling of a familiar tale of good and evil. Darren Aronofsky’s NOAH is about as far from that trope as it is possible to get and still be… Read More »
ALEXANDER
As is true of his other films, there is much to be said about Oliver Stones ALEXANDER. Unfortunately, in this case, little of it is good. This is not so much a film as an amorphous blob that has suffocated the idea of a film somewhere within its vast and gooey structure. There is a… Read More »
ALL THE KING’S MEN
ALL THE KING’S MEN is so swept up in being an important and timely film that it somehow never quite gets around to being either, much less both. It’s the second film based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Robert Penn Warren, who took his inspiration and bit more from the life of Louisiana’s flamboyant… Read More »
BOBBY
It pains me to have to slam a film that so obviously has its heart in the right place, but BOBBY is such an inept and misguided effort that there’s no other option. Taking place on the day when and in the place where, the Ambassador Hotel, that the title character was assassinated, it’s a… Read More »
FRACTURE
Hubris, as the ancient Greeks were oft wont to mull in their plays and myths, is a fatal flaw. It’s the one that the gods of those self same ancient Greeks couldn’t abide and hence, the one that got them interested in smiting the one showing it. FRACTURE is a film that would warm the… Read More »
HITCHCOCK
The splendid thing about HITCHCOCK is that it doesn’t just aspire to tell the story behind the making of PSYCHO. No, this wickedly endearing effort takes on the man, and the mythos behind the man, and then, for good measure, the woman behind both that made them legendary. Based on Stephen Rebello’s book, Alfred Hitchcock… Read More »