UNSTOPPABLE is a formula thriller, to be sure, but one in which everyone is at the top of his or her game. The premise is that of a runaway train with explosive cargo barreling into a major population center, and is played against a nice sub-plot of corporate weenies in their skyscrapers second-guessing and undercutting… Read More »
NEXT THREE DAYS, THE
Based on the infinitely superior French thriller, POUR ELLE, THE NEXT THREE DAYS is a road kill of a thriller. Flattened beyond recognition as being its particular genre, and with all its vital, life-giving juices mercilessly squished out of it. Whats left is a pulpy mess that is by turns painfully protracted and irritatingly stupid. Russell Crowe,… Read More »
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART 1
It might be hard for someone unfamiliar with the Harry Potter universe to catch the nuances of HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART 1. Fortunately, the larger themes are intact, despite some liberties taken with the chronology of the books and the usual necessity of streamlining a richly plotted novel into a workable screenplay.… Read More »
FASTER
FASTER sails through its first 90 minutes or so as a thrill-packed action flick. Riotously surreal and willfully so, it showcases Dwayne Johnsons star power, not to mention his pecs. Glistening with sweat and straining beneath the flesh, they are the first image on screen. Johnsons character this time is and ex-con Driver, the job… Read More »
GHOST ACTRESS (aka DON
GHOST ACTRESS details the odd doings at a movie studio in Japan. Unlike the usual make-them-jump-and-scream approach to telling this story, writer/ director Hideo Nakata, who wrote and directed the Japanese film, THE RING, on which the current American release is based, has opted for creating a mood of gradually increasing unease tempered with the… Read More »
THE WARRIOR’S WAY
THE WARRIOR’S WAY starts strong, ends with a slick tableaux and in between disappoints with a steady acceleration that not even a quietly charismatic performance by star Dong-Gun Jang, nor the image of a clown with a gun during the films climactic shoot-out, can surmount. A fanciful mix of spaghetti-western bad guys, colorful carnival folk,… Read More »
TRON – LEGACY
The original TRON was a film very much of its time, a time before e-mail and VOD, when those who had them looked upon the strange box sitting their desks with a mixture of awe and trepidation. Not having grown up with them, the population whose closest encounter until then with a computer had been… Read More »
THE GREEN HORNET
THE GREEN HORNET is not a great film, but it does get one thing very right. It is filled with the exuberance that a kid finds in living through the exploits of his or her favorite super hero or heroine. For all the faults to be found with its pacing, there is something enormously refreshing… Read More »
IP MAN 2 — LEGEND OF THE GRANDMASTER
IP MAN 2: LEGEND OF THE GRANDMASTER finds the eponymous master newly landed in Hong Kong after the turmoil of his escape from Japanese-occupied Foshan. While the film as a whole is a graceful, yet lethal, dig at chauvinism as well as imperialism, that is no impediment to it also being both an engrossing drama… Read More »
SANCTUM
James Cameron neither wrote nor directed SANCTUM, but his fingerprints as the executive producer of same are all over it. Visually, it’s an exhilarating experience. As for the storytelling, the word lugubrious comes to mind. The writing is stiff and ridden with clichés, with cheese-ish motifs overwhelmed by swelling, overwrought music cues that forge straight… Read More »
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