MAX PAYNE begins laudably enough. Based on the video game of the same name, it reproduces the graytone pen-and-ink world with appropriate shadows, stark lighting, and a hard-boiled protagonist that would make Sam Spade look like a cream puff. This is a man who literally crawls on broken glass without much noticing. Most of the… Read More »
Search Results for: coherence
REPO MEN
REPO MEN, not by any stretch of the imagination to be confused with the similarly monikered Alex Cox masterpiece of a few decades back, is a bewilderingly awful concoction that seems to have been written by committee. A committee whose individual members were forbidden to contact one another and who seem, collectively, to be ignorant… Read More »
GROWN UPS
The pain of watching a shlocky film is trivial compared to the torture of sitting through a shlocky film that has convinced itself that it has a message beyond being awful. The latter is the experience of GROWN UPS, a dismal interlude that in the first 10 minutes establishes that men are idiots, women are… 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 »
COUNTRY STRONG
COUNTRY STRONG is a sorry piece of screenwriting with excellent music and an emotionally ragged and truthful performance from Gwyneth Paltrow that is one of the best of her career. The plot is a string of hackneyed plot points from every flick ever made about show biz. Though there are hints of ALL ABOUT EVE,… Read More »
R.I.P.D
Its not enough that R.I.P.D. is bad, its also derivatively bad while also being mind-numbingly boring. Whatever wit or smarts or silliness the Dark Horse graphic novel of the same name by Peter Lenkov possesses, it is not found in this screen adaptation that is neither fun nor funny. In a messy pastiche of GHOSTBUSTERS,… Read More »
HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE
You can just picture it. Someone comes up with this great idea to make a fun, hip flick about cops in Hollywood full of cameos by stars that ends with a chase down Hollywood Boulevard. And one day theyll make that film. In the meantime we have HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE, a film so bad that the… Read More »
UPTOWN GIRLS
UPTOWN GIRLS is remarkable for its monumental ineptitude. Students of film may well study it one day, mouths agape in wonder, as an example of what not to do when creating a narrative. It wants to be a heartwarming comedy, but it is neither. Instead, it is an irksome and depressing tale that takes just… Read More »
demonlover
The French have brought us many wonderful things: Voltaire, Manet, brioche. But it pays to remember that they as a people worship Jerry Lewis and Mickey Rourke. They also have no clue about producing even semi-decent rock music. I bring this up because I’ve just seen Olivier Assayas’ demonlover and the experience left me asking… Read More »
SILVER CITY
SILVER CITY, the title of John Sayles latest film, sounds like a pale reflection of El Dorado, the mythical city of gold that European sought way back when. They were obsessed with dreams of wealth beyond imagination and the power it would buy for them. With eyes on that prize, they failed to see the… Read More »