AFTER EARTH is a solemn, self-congratulatory flick showing all the symptoms of a vanity piece run amok. Based on a story devised by star Will Smith as a vehicle to launch 14-year-old son Jaden as an action star, it shows little internal logic while never giving the audience a reason to care about anything that… Read More »
PACIFIC RIM
PACIFIC RIM is a blockbuster of a curiosity. A film top-heavy with plot, but one that plods along at a oddly pedestrian pace as it charts the end of the world as we know it. It is also oddly populated with leads that are wafer-thin characters, and supporting players that, while not necessarily deep, are… Read More »
PERCY JACKSON AND THE SEA OF MONSTERS
PERCY JACKSON AND THE SEA OF MONSTERS is an improvement on its predecessor, PERCY JACKSON AND THE LIGHTNING THIEF, a film that had much potential as the kick-start of a franchise, but was not, alas, all it could have been. What it had going for it, though, and this one has, too, is that the… Read More »
ELYSIUM
Neill Blomkamp, he of DISTRICT 9 fame, should not be expected to make a straight-up thriller without also making it a damning critique of societys ills. Nor would we want him to. His is an eye that can pick out the details that illuminate the whole without going all dialectic on us. Instead, he uses… Read More »
THE WORLD’S END
The Cornetto Trilogy comes to a superb conclusion with THE WORLDS END. Director Edgar Wright again teams with the regular cast of co-writer Simon Pegg as the anti-hero, and Nick Frost as the humorless corporate lawyer, along with newcomers Eddie Marsan as the grinning bunny rabbit of a car salesman, Paddy Considine as the enterperneur… Read More »
THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES
And so the search for a blockbuster of a film franchise appealing to the lucrative tween market continues. Alas, MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES is too much of a mess to warrant a sequel, even though the young-adult novels on which they are and would be based are bona fide hits with their target audience,… Read More »
RIDDICK
Vin Diesel has carved a very specific niche for himself in filmdom as the anti-hero of the better (lower case) pulp fiction being produced for cinematic consumption. Resourceful, cunning, and above all more than merely human as he races very fast cars in the FAST AND FURIOUS franchise, or as he pummels entire planets into… Read More »
ENDER’S GAME
ENDERS GAME presents the viewer with just the sort of philosophical conundrum posed in the film itself. What to do with a film that is a refreshingly intelligent, morally challenging tale , but based on a novel by Orson Scott Card, a man whose views on gay rights are repugnant? It is perhaps jejune to… Read More »
THOR: THE DARK WORLD
In THOR: THE DARK WORLD, there may be no suspense about how the latest nefarious plot to destroy the universe will turn out, but there are plenty of clever tricks along the way courtesy of the real star of the film, Thors trickster brother, Loki. Not that Thor, once again in the toothsome person of… Read More »
THE HOBBIT — THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG
THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG is the best middle film that money and talent can produce. This is not an indictment, it is, rather, an embrace of the inherent problem of the second of three filmic installments, viz to wit, if you havent seen the first one, there is little even the most resourceful… Read More »
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