COWBOYS & ALIENS is an exhilarating and stunningly successful exercise in the improbable. It trips the light fantastic ambling through idioms from classic westerns while piling on the CGI of nasty creatures from another world driving the action. In classic western tradition, the hero, Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) is a laconic loner, quick with his… Read More »
RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
Before they devolved into a campy excuse for a quick buck, THE PLANET OF THE APES franchise was a nicely rendered and clever conceit for commenting on the human condition by having apes stand in for us. RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, the prequel that explains how it all happened, is a worthy… Read More »
CONAN THE BARBARIAN
CONAN THE BARBARIAN, being the apotheosis of pulp, means that any nuance or subtlety involved in bringing it to the screen would be an insult to the genre. For all the failings of this dull rendering of Robert E. Howards mythos, it is not a small undertaking. The sets are monumental, the acting broad, forging… Read More »
DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK
There are many deeply creepy moments in DONT BE AFRAID OF THE DARK, a re-imaging of a 1973 television movie of the same name. There are also many terrifying interludes, but the image that may be the most unsettling is that of a doll that has had its teeth gnawed away. Innocence and violence in… Read More »
HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS
The problem with translating any of the Harry Potter books to the big screen is that author J.K. Rowling has cram-packed so much delicious detail onto virtually every page of her magnum opus. As with the previous effort, HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERERS STONE, director Chris Columbus and company have done a stand-out job of capturing the… Read More »
IN TIME
IN TIME is a better idea for a movie than it is a movie. The conceit is a clever one, and more, ahem, timely it could not be. In an alternate universe very much like our own, science has cracked the problem of ageing, and everyone is genetically programmed to stop the aging process at… Read More »
IMMORTALS
IMMORTALS does not limit itself to the traditional myth of the hero Theseus and his tussle with the minotaur in a labyrinth. Rather, elements of that myth of interwoven with several others in a concoction that provides the pleasure of identifying the disparate tales in a setting that is a delicious Grand Guignol of elegantly… Read More »
ARTHUR CHRISTMAS
The holiday season is an emotional rollercoaster for many reasons and ARTHUR CHRISTMAS does a neat job of exploring many of them while still being both heart-warming and wonderfully entertaining. More than entertaining, really, this flick from the Aardman Studio has all the makings of a Christmas classic that kids can grow up with and… Read More »
SOLARIS
In a move as audacious as it is disastrous, Steve Soderbergh has decided to push the edges of what filmmaking can be and created in SOLARIS not so much a motion picture as a still life. One that is more sleep-inducing than a warm glass of milk and a bottle of Seconal. It is remarkable… Read More »
SECRET WORLD OF ARRIETTY, THE
Studio Ghibli has taken Mary Nortons classic novel, The Borrowers and made it uniquely its own, but its done so without losing what is best in Nortons story. The adaptation by Hayao Miyazaki and Keiko Niwa may have been transferred the action to Japan, but the basic elements of loneliness, friendship, and the fragility of… Read More »
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