The biggest mistake in making a testosterone-fueled action fantasy is to have it take itself too seriously. THE A-TEAM doesnt fall into that trap. Instead, it takes everything that was fun about the series on which it was based and amps it up into stratospherically ridiculous heights. And it does so with an irresistible insouciance… Read More »
JONAH HEX
It is a consistent if ill-considered move to make JONAH HEX as lifeless as the dead with whom the title character converses. Based on the DC Comic of the same name, it follows the adventures of said Jonah (Josh Brolin), a bounty hunter with heavy baggage, and even heavier facial disfigurement, as hes called upon… Read More »
KNIGHT AND DAY
KNIGHT AND DAY is what a summer popcorn movie should be. Its big, its preposterous, and its a whole lot of fun. Boy meets girl. Boy behaves in socially inappropriate but oddly compelling ways involving guns and random acts of derring-do. Girl goes along for the ride, more or less willingly depending on where the… Read More »
YEAR ONE
YEAR ONE is a lazy excrescence of a film. Crude, sloppy, flat, and singularly uninspired, its only redeeming virtue is proving that Michael Cera is capable of rising above even this abominable material. He does this by being in a film that is entirely separate from the one taking place around him, a smart move.… Read More »
PREDATORS
PREDATORS is a murky, would-be pedantic, mess of a flick. It goes to the trouble of informing its audience that it is a continuation of 1987s PREDATOR, but takes no trouble before or after to deliver any reason for revisiting the premise of humans hunted for sport by aliens who have conquered invisibility cloaks. The… Read More »
SALT
Its so nice to know that even though the Cold War is over, its still possible to make a thriller rife with old-fashioned Cold War paranoia like SALT. Its a slight but solid bit of filmmaking that fuels the fires of conspiracy theorists while keeping the audience second-guessing about the motives of its eponymous protagonist.… Read More »
CENTURION
CENTURION mixes a thoroughly honorable high-mindedness with frequent and jarring examples of torture porn. While the ethics of using human beings as pawns in political games is the central theme of the story, the execution is less than astute. What may have aspired to be an intelligent action flick is instead a standard chase flick… Read More »
TAKERS
There are two stories duking in out in TAKERS. One is a glitzy caper flick with a clever leader of a group of glamorous thieves with hearts of gold (mostly). The other is a gritty L.A. cop drama with a dedicated detective, the kind beset with the usual assortment of personal problems, trying the crack… Read More »
MACHETE
MACHETE, Robert Rodriquezs homage to grindhouse genre, is a bracing concretion of advocacy filmmaking and raucous hyperbole. In spirit, it is the unexpected successor to the likes of Rabelais, who used giants and satire to bring low the status quo. The giant here is the title character (Danny Trejo), a former Mexican federal agent out… Read More »
RED
Theres no doubt that RED is fun. The problem is that it should have been much more fun. A romp with a band of aging black ops agents who whoop the collectives tushys of the kiddies who inherited the CIA and other assorted agencies is a potent boomers daydream. Certainly the premise, a scintillating mix… Read More »
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