What we have here is a dynamite premise fumbled in the execution. BRIGHTBURN gives us a strange visitor from another planet crashing to Earth as a baby and taken in by a good-hearted, infertile farm couple (Elizabeth Banks, David Denman) in the midst of baby fever. As with that other story of an infant from… Read More »
THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY — Part 2
THE HUNGER GAMES may be based on a wildly popular young adult series of novels, but the film adaptations have always tackled issues that are powerfully adult and presented as such. Set in an unspecified future, the class system has run so wild that the life and death of the proletariat class has become institutionalized… Read More »
THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY — PART 1
THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY — PART 1 is not unlike its iconic heroine, Katniss Everdeen. It’s bold, headstrong, no-nonsense, and impatient to get on with things. It begins almost directly from whence the last installment of the saga left off, and with little if any exposition about anything that happened before. For example, why those… Read More »
MEET DAVE
MEET DAVE would be entirely harmless if it weren’t for the perfunctory feel of it all. Murphy is not the physical comedian necessary to pull this off, and without a solid script to back him up, it’s got nothing to recommend it except maybe that actor in a frogman suit clinging madly to a giant… Read More »
W
With all the hubbub in Oliver Stone’s W, it might be easy to miss the key line in it. That would be the one delivered by W himself. He’s having a heart-to-heart with the clergyman who is shepherding him through his born-again experience. In a moment of anguish, he bemoans the fact that people just… Read More »
ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO
Kevin Smith has the unique ability to find the tenderest of emotions in the most profane of situations, and that talent is what makes ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO more than just a one-note dirty joke. Not that there aren’t a lot of dirty jokes working here. There are. A LOT. Frequently. Mostly. The… Read More »
NEXT THREE DAYS, THE
Based on the infinitely superior French thriller, POUR ELLE, THE NEXT THREE DAYS is a road kill of a thriller. Flattened beyond recognition as being its particular genre, and with all its vital, life-giving juices mercilessly squished out of it. Whats left is a pulpy mess that is by turns painfully protracted and irritatingly stupid. Russell Crowe,… Read More »
OUR IDIOT BROTHER
OUR IDIOT BROTHER, profane title notwithstanding, is a liltingly transcendent comedy. The humor, character-driven and smart, is pointed, but delivered compassionately. And this is perfectly in keeping with the esoteric underpinnings at play here. The eponymous character, Ned (Paul Rudd), is not so much the hero of the piece as the Holy Fool, a hippie… Read More »
MAN ON A LEDGE
MAN ON A LEDGE is a not unworthy entry in the suspense/thriller subgenre dealing with an innocent man trying to prove his innocence. The innocent man is cop framed for a diamond theft. The ruse is to play bait-and-switch with the authorities who put him in prison. The execution is neither as lean nor as… Read More »
SLITHER
SLITHER doesn’t just embrace the cheesy goofiness of those B-grade horror films from the middle of the last century, it also gives them a big wet sloppy French kiss. Taking what is so endearing about the ineptitude, it tweaks the bad dialogue and worst plot points, turning them into an homage to bad cinema that… Read More »