It’s the moment when Elvis (Austin Butler) first asserts his independence from the tentacled hold that his manager, Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks) has, and, alas, will always have on him. Elvis at this point in his nascent career has been labeled a threat to the American way of life in the conformist 1950s onto… Read More »
AUSTRALIA
Baz Luhrmann has a great deal to say about his native Australia, and he has very ambitiously attempted to say it all in one film. It’s a bold choice more admirable in the intention than in the execution. He has essentially grafted two separate films together, one an over-the-top homage to adventure films from the… Read More »
VAN HELSING
VAN HELSING is a film that does not do things by halves. One might, in principle, admire the way it pulls out all the stops early on, but the results, a hemorrhaging husk that eventually dissolves into the same sort of dust as the staked vampires that people its running time, prevents admiring it in… Read More »
THE CROCODILE HUNTER: COLLISION COURSE
I am never going to have an aesthetic appreciation of the bird-eating spider. It’s about the size of a Bosc pear, hairy, and packing fangs that spout venom. Steve Irwin, cable television’s Crocodile Hunter, on the other hand, has a starry-eyed, ebullient adoration for it that makes the creature seem a little less loathsome. And… Read More »