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Writer-director David Michôd’s spare tale of hard-scrabble life, brutal and sudden death, and alienation in a collapsed Australia is as frustrating as it is fascinating. On one hand it’s an ugly, evocative, and deliberately paced road movie that plays out like the Mad Max movies filtered through the works of Cormac McCarthy; on the other it’s so … Continue reading
The break-out success of the jukebox musical Jersey Boys pretty much guaranteed the inevitable film adaptation; however, said spin-off not only fails to adequately compensate for the schmaltz, it exacerbates it with some truly bland, derivative film-making. It’s as if director Clint Eastwood set out to dramatize the most boring episode of VH1’s Behind the Music … Continue reading
A victim of its own lofty ambitions, William and Carlyle Eubanks’ The Signal is a visual impressively, occasionally inspired, and thoroughly surreal science fiction thriller that often stumbles under the weight of self-consciousness. It’s also a nicely stitched-together pastiche of genres, starting off as a college-kids road movie, veering briefly into Blair Witch country on the … Continue reading
It’s a rare sequel — animated or otherwise — that expands the story of its predecessor without rehashing it, and an even rarer family-oriented film that manages to be fun and mature without being condescending to its audience. How to Train Your Dragon 2 does both. Set five years after the first movie, a clunky prologue … Continue reading
Doug Liman had dropped the radar as a filmmaker for most of the past decade, but with the surprisingly smart and suitably bombastic science fiction thriller Edge of Tomorrow, he pops back up with more of the high-concept action beats and character development that made The Bourne Identity and Mr. and Mrs. Smith so much fun. More importantly, Liman takes … Continue reading
Returning as director to the franchise he put on the movie map after an absence of more than a decade, Bryan Singer has turned out what feels like the first true X-Men movie since, well, the last one he directed. Ambitious and epic in scale and intimate in execution, X-Men: Days of Future Past seal the … Continue reading
It’s been ten years since Toho Studios put the Godzilla franchise in mothballs after the release of the sub-par 50th anniversary feature Godzilla: Final Wars. The feeling was that everything that could be done with the world’s most famous giant monster had been done, and that a rest (and better special effects) was needed. Of … Continue reading
One of the most original, suspenseful, and surprising indies in the past few years, writer-director Jeremy Saulnier’s Blue Ruin is a mesmerizing exercise in style and character study. Granted, that last bit is enough to make many a movie-goers’ sphincters clinch with dread of ponderous, talky self-indulgence, oblique references to obscure film movements, and/or overblown visual flourishes; … Continue reading
Godzilla is easily the greatest cinematic creation ever. Consider the evidence: He’s the size of a skyscraper, breathes atomic fire, has alternately stomped on and/or protected many of the world’s major cities, is the subject of a song by the Blue Öyster Cult, and has appeared in 29 feature films, with a brand new one … Continue reading
Fledgling director Marc Webb displayed promise when the bumpy but enjoyable Amazing Spider-Man hit the big screen in 2012. It was rough around the edges — the tone was all over the place and the plot was not always a smooth ride — but the enthusiasm and creativity were there, and talent and chemistry of Andrew Garfield … Continue reading
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