THE HUNGER GAMES may be based on a wildly popular young adult series of novels, but the film adaptations have always tackled issues that are powerfully adult and presented as such. Set in an unspecified future, the class system has run so wild that the life and death of the proletariat class has become institutionalized… Read More »
SPECTRE
There are very specific things we want in a James Bond film. Great action, dastardly villains who are larger than life and twice as buggy, and Bond girls who have evolved over the years to be a bit more than merely a pulchritudinous interlude. In Bond, as incarnated by Daniel Craig, we want a steely… Read More »
MAZE RUNNER: THE SCORCH TRIALS
THE MAZE RUNNER: SCORCH TRIALS is a fast-paced, involving adventure tale that is better than the original. Where that installment, though entertaining enough, had the usual quota of young adult novel clichés, this one is a lean, mean look at a dystopian future run by an evil entity with noble intentions. Those are, of course,… Read More »
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: ROGUE NATION Rocks
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: ROGUE NATION is lean, mean, and seriously fun. There is not a wasted moment for fans of high-energy, slickly plotted action flicks of the popcorn variety, as this installment of the franchise finds the Impossible Mission Force shut down by the government, but not out of business. Not by a longshot. Their last official… Read More »
MAGIC MIKE XXL: Flash and Dazzle
Steven Soderbergh is an executive producer of MAGIC MIKE XXL, but that is the only trace of that director to be found in this sequel that is more about joy than angst. Channing Tatum, returning as the eponymous male stripper, has taken the fun and dazzle from the original and eschewed most of the cerebral… Read More »
Gareth Davis and Iko Uwais Undertake THE RAID 2: BERENDAL
The one question writer/director Gareth Evans hates is the one about how a Welshman became the leading light of Indonesian cinema. So I didn’t ask. There was too much to discuss anyway about his masterpiece, THE RAID 2: BERENDAL. According to both men, it was all about the details, From choreographing a stunning prison riot that… Read More »
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 — Jay Baruchel, America Ferrara, Dean Deblois & Bonnie Arnold
Interviewing four people at once can be daunting when it comes to getting everyone to join in the conversation, but the gang from the Dreamworks animated film HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 had spent so much time together since the making of DRAGON 1, that they were almost a single entity. When I spoke… Read More »
THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES
And so it is our last visit to Middle Earth, and a bittersweet one it is. Peter Jackson’s finale to his pair of trilogies is a triumph of spectacle and humanity, notwithstanding that the human beings of the piece are not the main characters. It’s only flaw, and that is a relative one, is that… Read More »
TERMINATOR SALVATION
For all the explosions, gunfire, firestorms, and manly gnashing of teeth, TERMINTATOR SALVATION has an overriding weariness to it. The franchise, while robust box-office wise, has essentially been telling the same story now for a quarter of a century. A tale of time-travel, murderous cyborgs, and a father born decades after his son’s conception is… Read More »
SHREK FOREVER AFTER
The magic is back. SHREK FOREVER AFTER has recaptured everything that made the original so great, including the attitude of William Steig, the author of the original Shrek book, while keeping those elements that worked in the subsequent installments. Which is to say, there is nothing of the third to be found here. Shrek (Mike… Read More »
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