The key to why the film RAMBO exists may well boil down to something a mercenary says to the title character. I’m only here because of my ex-wife and three kids. Which is to say we all have bills to pay and responsibilities to meet and why should Sylvester Stallone be any different? The mercenary,… Read More »
VANTAGE POINT
VANTAGE POINT takes a storyline that is a middling throwback to the Cold War paranoid fantasies of a half-century ago and tries to jazz it up with a multi-view narrative. The device makes the most of doing the requisite slow reveal of exactly what happened before, during, and after a terrorist attack in Spain, but… Read More »
BEE MOVIE — DVD
BEE MOVIE is a perfectly sweet little film that suffered from audience expectations. Fans of Jerry Seinfeld were, perhaps, expecting the same sensibility in this, his first post-television film project, as they had enjoyed on the series. It wasn’t an unreasonable expectation, Seinfeld and series writers Spike Feresten and Andy Robin were among the films… Read More »
WANTED
The question that comes to mind while watching the first big action sequence in WANTED is how in the heck are these folks going to top this? Automobiles do things Newtonian physics can barely account for and so do the people driving them. It, like the other chase scenes in this big, messy, gloriously over-the-top… Read More »
INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL — DVD
You couldnât possibly have Indiana Jones without Harrison Ford and his fedora. You also couldnât have INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL without the rip-snorting special effects that keep the fantasy-adventure sprinting along at its delightfully breakneck pace. The special 2-disc DVD release offers both. First and best, though, thereâs the film… Read More »
CHARLIE ST. CLOUD
CHARLIE ST. CLOUD is a middling, innocuous film, rife with woozy golden sunlight and swelling syrupy music invoked to create the emotions that the film itself fails to ignite. For all the distraught characters, the film itself deftly sidesteps any attempts to explore the further reaches of passions, of romance or of grief, instead opting for… Read More »
THE EXPENDABLES
Its comforting to know after experiencing THE EXPENDABLES that Sylvester Stallone will once again find himself on the list of Razzie nominees for 2010, and because he is the director, co-writer, and co-star, it will be in multiple categories. It doesnt get back the time spent watching this generic action flick, but it does provide… Read More »
TANGLED
If THE LITTLE MERMAID dreamed of being somewhere up there, Rapunzel (Mandy Moore), the heroine of Disneys latest animated musical, TANGLED, dreams of being somewhere down there. Out of the tower, that is, where she has been kept since being kidnapped from her royal parents as a baby by a Gothel (Donna Murphy), scheming woman… Read More »
LOOPER
The sign of a great film is not just the story it tells. Its the way that story is told, with an attention to the tiniest detail that makes each second of screen time, the tiniest bit of action part of a whole that is holographic. Each element is a reflection of that whole that… Read More »
LAST STAND, THE
And so Arnold Schwarzenegger has returned to the silver screen after his sojourn in the theater of politics. The action star of dozens of blockbusters has wisely chosen for his vehicle a flick that acknowledges that he will not again see 40, nor even 50. Sort of. While this is an Arnold who wears reading… Read More »