THE KARATE KID is a first-rate example of what a remake should be. Not a re-tread, but rather a re-imagining with a fresh viewpoint and an even fresher perspective. The action had moved to China. The kid in question is learning kung fu, rather than the eponymous martial art, and while there is ample use… Read More »
TOY STORY 3
Since his introduction by Pixar over a decade ago, Woody the toy cowboy (Tom Hanks) has faced dangers and adversaries of many varieties. In TOY STORY 1, it was Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) stealing the number one position in owner Andys heart, and that psychotic kid next door who did unfortunate things to the toys… 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 »
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 »
THE TWILIGHT SAGA — ECLIPSE
It is as though the TWILIGHT franchise made the calculated but not necessarily unwise decision to cater to its enormous fan base and only to that fan base of overexcited adolescent females for whom hormones are a new experience. This is not a casual fan base. This is a fan base that was delighted to… Read More »
THE LAST AIRBENDER
Take a truly robust mythology, access to some of the best CGI houses working today, a budget that allows for location filming outside of Philadelphia, and what do you get? In the hands of former hot property M. Night Shyamalan, you get THE LAST AIRBENDER, an irritating fantasy flick that finds its greatest magic in… Read More »
CRAZIES DVD, THE
Some remakes pay perfunctory respect to the source material, but THE CRAZIES DVD release does more than that. It is a proper homage to the man who made it possible, George A. Romero, and the sub-genre of political horror that he pioneered. There amid the usual deleted scenes and how-we-did-it featurettes, is THE GEORGE A.… 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 »
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