-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Whereas most biopics suffer from cramming either too much or too little of its subject’s life into a standard running time, Tate Taylor’s warts-and-all examination of James Brown hits that sweet spot that eludes most of its ilk. Get On Up digs deep into what made the Godfather of Soul tick, what drove him towards fame … Continue reading
One of the most pleasant surprises of a mixed-bag movie summer, Guardians of the Galaxy is something akin to Star Wars on Quaaludes. It’s a tongue firmly in cheek throwback to cheesy ’80s-era B-grade sci-fi movies that is equal parts goofball comedy, cartoony action, and general weirdness. The movie opens with a brief prelude: A young … Continue reading
It’s almost impossible to sit through Lucy without pondering what could have been. A ham-fisted fusion of high-concept science fiction and lowbrow action from writer-director Luc Besson, it fails in both categories. It does succeed at being a very, very dumb movie about being very, very smart — for whatever that’s worth. Scarlett Johansson, slumming between … Continue reading
Writer-director and indie darling Richard Linklater has never been one to shy away from unconventional projects; the philosophy primer Waking Life, the ambitious animated science fiction drama A Scanner Darkly, the Before trilogy, and the pseudo-true crime dramedy Bernie all bear the mark of a filmmaker playing with form. Which is why Linklater’s ambitious drama Boyhood is … Continue reading
It’s rare that a sequel or a reboot manages to justify its existence in the megaplex, but Dawn of the Planet of the Apes manages to one-up its progenitor and then some. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2010) was itself a pleasant surprise; granted, expectations were low — most viewers still had the bad … Continue reading
A poor man’s The Exorcist grafted to a by-the-numbers police procedural, Scott Derrickson’s Deliver Us from Evil gets more mileage from its hybrid premise than one would expect, by it quickly goes adrift in before coming to rest with an anti-climactic thud of a conclusion. The story is based on the book Beware the Night … Continue reading
We are now four movies into Michael Bay’s mind-numbing franchise, and there is very little left to say about the series that hasn’t been said already. The sequels have always been a monotonous rehash of the original robo-slugfest, and Transformers: Age of Extinction only offers the same thing, and more of it — literally, given … Continue reading
Adapted from Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette’s obscure 1982 graphic novel Le Transperceneige by South Korean writer-director Joon-ho Bong, the politically charged Snowpiercer is a heady mix of art house and megaplex mainstream, beauty and brutality, that rates as one of the best dystopian allegories since George Orwell’s 1984. Or, to put it in less pretentious terms, it’s like Metropolis on a train, … Continue reading
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
movie ink™ 