It is a fine line to walk, loving a pop culture phenomenon with all your being, yet being able to make mad sport of it at the same time. Thus is DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE, the ultimate fanboy and fangirl experience of the Marvel Universe that manages to be both wickedly funny and curiously reverent. Deadpool… Read More »
REMINISCENCE
There is a persistent torpor to REMINISCENCE, a film that tries to be many things and fails for the most part. Rife with visuals that evoke a disquieting dreamlike state, the story, an ersatz neo-noir set mostly between sunset and sunrise, drones along with the cinematic equivalent of a mosquito’s interminable buzz on a humid… Read More »
THE FRONT RUNNER
a thoughtful, anarchically lively, film about the obligations of the candidate and the responsibilities of the press that force us to question both
LOGAN
The standalone X-Men story, LOGAN, dares much with its darkness, and achieves even more by being an emotionally brutal story that relies on character, not spectacle, to pack its considerable wallop. A tale that is as psychically violent as it is physically so, it is a sharp descant to the earlier films in the franchise… Read More »
A Choppy CHAPPIE
CHAPPIE is a cross between Pinicchio and ROBOCOP with a dash of DISTRICT 9. That last is unsurprising because CHAPPIE is the brainchild of Neill Blomkamp, and many of the elements at work in that earlier film about the meaning of humanity are at work in this one. The battleground is still South Africa, Blomkamp’s… 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 »
REAL STEEL
REAL STEEL follows a traditional, and somewhat ROCKY-esque, path with some ingenious devices that keep the action lively. Set in a near future where boxing has gone robotic, the main thrust of the story is still very human, with a neer-do-well of an ex-boxer having second chances thrust upon him by the son he abandoned 11 years… Read More »
WOLVERINE, THE
WOLVERINE is a murky and muddled thing saved, such as it is, by Hugh Jackmans steadfast commitment to a story that leaps about with the same agility as his eponymous character as it attempts to explore the psychological underpinnings of The Wolverines struggle with immortality, and his mercy killing of the love of his life,… 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 »
X-MEN: THE LAST STAND
Oh how the mighty have fallen. X-MEN: THE LAST STAND is the third installment in what until now has been a sterling franchise and its failings are an affront to what has come before. To be sure, the fine philosophical underpinnings, one of the series’ hallmarks, are still there, but with a new director, Brett… Read More »