What you really want to know is whether or not J. J. Abrams has worked his magic and saved the Star Wars franchise. The answer is not just yes. But, rather, YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is perfection. That is all you really need to know and, while I will not do this film the disservice of lessening… Read More »
KRAMPUS
KRAMPUS begins in such a promising fashion. Taking the worst that the holiday has to offer in this, the real world of boorish relatives, rampaging hordes of shoppers, and Christmas pageants gone horribly awry, it hopes to build on that to tell an even more horrifying tale of the supernatural comeuppance for losing the holiday… Read More »
VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN
VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN begins by telling us that we have heard this story before. And we have. Sort of. The Frankenstein (James McAvoy) in question is the one that built the iconic monster out of spare human parts, but it’s Igor (Daniel Radcliffe), the man scientist’s assistant, who is our narrator, and it’s from his fresh,… Read More »
THE FORBIDDEN ROOM
To see a Guy Maddin film is to have the disconcerting experience of having the horrors of the commonplace revealed. With the most delicate shifting of perspective, and by only a few metaphorical millimeters, hitherto unsuspected absurdities are made manifest, resulting in a comedy to give you nightmares, and nightmares to make you howl with… 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 LAST WITCH HUNTER
THE LAST WITCH HUNTER is a long slog. There are few genuine scares. There are few remarkable special effects. There is, instead, a pervasive and persistent lassitude to this tale of an immortal witch hunter, Kaulder (Vin Diesel), and the complicated relationship he has tracking down the eponymous practitioners of magic. Kaulder is very good… Read More »
CRIMSON PEAK
If CRIMSON PEAK offered nothing more than the creepiest bathtub specter since THE SHINING, it would still qualify as a monstrously entertaining film. But this is Guillermo del Toro directing and co-writing, and so the lushness of subtext mirrors the classically Gothic idiom of the story. The paranormal is the least disturbing of the elements… Read More »
THE MARTIAN
THE MARTIAN asks some tough metaphysical questions as it answers some thorny scientific problems with nifty solutions. What’s worth living for? What’s worth dying for? And why should giving up never be an option? The premise is daunting. Mark Watney (Matt Damon), ace botanist and member of the Ares 3 exploratory expedition to Mars in… Read More »
MAZE RUNNER: THE SCORCH TRIALS
THE MAZE RUNNER: SCORCH TRIALS is a fast-paced, involving adventure tale that is better than the original. Where that installment, though entertaining enough, had the usual quota of young adult novel clichés, this one is a lean, mean look at a dystopian future run by an evil entity with noble intentions. Those are, of course,… Read More »
HITMAN: AGENT 47 A Swing and A Miss
This is not the first time that someone has attempted to bring the video game upon which HITMAN: AGENT 47 is based to the big screen. The last one, HITMAN starring a pre-Justified Timothy Olyphant went down in flames, and this one joins its still-smoldering carcass. It’s not that making a film out of a video… Read More »
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