CITY OF EMBER is a triumph of art direction trumping everything else. Based on the novel by Jeanne Duprau, it is brimming with imagination, a pointedly political subtext, but not a whit of the wonder that should drive a tale such as this. The eponymous city contains the remnants of humanity, sent to the underground… Read More »
WAR OF THE WORLDS
There is a litany of inevitables in Steven Spielberg’s version of WAR OF THE WORLDS. There’s humanity turning on itself in a desperate scramble for survival. There are the vistas of CGI presenting hordes of extra-terrestrial killing machines cutting a swath across cities, suburbs and points rural. There are the seething tensions between an emotionally… Read More »
ZATHURA
ZATHURA is a big concept, but not an original one. It is, in point of fact, pretty much a rehashing of a much better film, JUMANJI, which was also based on a book by Chris Van Allsburg. It’s not fair to say that ZATHURA’s biggest failing is that it doesn’t have Robin Williams to liven… Read More »
CATCH A FIRE
CATCH A FIRE is a timely consideration of what drives human beings to extremes. Based on a true story of South Africa’s time under apartheid, it shows one man radicalized from passivity to activism to armed resistance with the same dizzy speed that his illusion of security is shattered. The time is 1980 and the… Read More »