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 »
DAYBREAKERS
DAYBREAKERS is a film that has run through 99% of its good ideas by the time the opening credits have concluded. At least the stylish, if occasionally obvious, art direction gives the audience something to occupy its collective self as the half-baked tale unfolds. The time is 2019, and a bat-borne plague has turned all… Read More »
THE GREAT GATSBY
The Jazz Age was a time of excess and self-indulgence across class distinctions that was unprecedented. The scribe of that age, F. Scott Fitzgerald, poured all of that into his writing, along with a generous dollop of angst about what it all meant. His successor, at least as far as depicting that ci-mentioned excess and… 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 »
HAPPY FEET
When it comes to moviedom, penguins are as close as it gets to a sure thing, hit-wise. This is something irresistible about this unlikely bird and the way it’s so easy to anthropomorphize its sturdy waddle and formal wear. To his credit, George Miller, director, co-author, and conceiver of the story as a whole, doesn’t… Read More »