No one will mistake FROM PARIS WITH LOVE for a classic. The story is just so many set pieces that hang together by the most delicate of gossamer threads. Yet, they are set pieces that show off the best of stars John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, while allowing director Pierrel Morel to indulge in… Read More »
DEAR JOHN
DEAR JOHN continues the translation from page to screen of wholesome romances devised by genre juggernaut Nicholas Sparks. This one weaves 9/11 into a story about the distances between people and the difficulties in bridging them, whether those distances are spatial or emotional. Our lovely couple are Savannah (Amanda Seyfried) and John (Channing Tatum), two… Read More »
VALENTINE’S DAY
VALENTINE’S DAY is a mixed bag of genially unchallenging material designed to appeal to the widest possible audience without actively alienating anybody. It’s a formula that leaves little leeway for anything of a whiz bang nature. Using multiple story lines all loosely centered around a florist helps segregate the dreck from the more entertaining snippets,… Read More »
PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS — THE LIGHTNING THIEF
The classical Greek myths has persisted in the collective imagination since they first sprouted in ancient Hellene. That they have infused themselves into popular young adult fiction in the Percy Jackson series is no surprise, nor is it a surprise that a cinematic rendering should spring from it. The only surprise is that it took… Read More »
THE WOLFMAN
THE WOLFMAN hearkens back with great hope and poor follow-through to Universal’s classic horror films. There is much that is improved in this retelling of the original 1941 flick, and much that suffers a surfeit of technology. The story follows the original’s arc, with Lawrence Talbot suffering the bite of a werewolf, a band of… Read More »
SHUTTER ISLAND
It’s no great trick to work out the twist in SHUTTER ISLAND, nor is having done so any great hindrance to enjoying this latest collaboration between Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio. In fact, the clues judiciously scattered throughout the film all but demand that the audience figure out that one small piece of the puzzle… Read More »
CRAZIES, THE
THE CRAZIES, a remake of the 1973 George Romero flick of the same name, is a nicely written, well acted, and perfectly directed entry into the jump-and-scare subgenre of horror. Set in the sleepy Iowa town of Owen Marsh, which is the emblematic of the heartland and its all-American values, it takes little time to… Read More »
GHOST WRITER, THE
In THE GHOST WRITER, Roman Polanski takes Robert Harris novel of the same name and gives it his own unique stamp. The tale is the classic one of an innocent man suddenly finding himself in the midst of intrigue and danger not of his making, The ominous overtones are pure Polanski. The innocent, who is… Read More »
COP OUT
COP OUT is such a mess that picking out any single element for richly deserved damnation is to lessen the awful impact of a whole that is so much more than the sum of its parts. Badly written, uncertainly directed, and acted by his two stars, Tracy Morgan and Bruce Willis, as though they had… Read More »
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
Tim Burton, wanting to put his own stamp on ALICE IN WONDERLAND, has wandered not just far from the story, but from the very essence of what Lewis Carroll created. Rather than a Wonderland full of terrifying adventures and deliciously absurd whimsy, he has created the Underland, a place of terrifyingly, yet lugubrious, bad filmmaking.… Read More »
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