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A little darker and more serious than Marvel Studios’ other movies to date, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is an impressive action-drama that proves that superhero sequels can be worthwhile. Bigger and bolder yet tightly focused in terms of story and character, it shakes up the Marvel Cinematic Universe and pushes the boundaries of what … Continue reading
A loud, visceral, and messy assault on the senses — and not in a fun way — actor/California governor/actor again Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Sabotage delivers what it promises — to its star’s career. It’s an ugly piece of work whose innate scuzziness works both for and against it. It’s a movie at war with itself, a … Continue reading
For years now the whimsical movie stylings of Wes Anderson have regularly been dismissed as something of an acquired taste, as rambling, self-indulgent musings drenched in artifice and contrivance. Granted, there’s a lot of truth to that, but to dismiss them outright is to throw the proverbial baby out with the equally proverbial bath water. … Continue reading
Believe it or not, the pseudo-sequel 300: Rise of an Empire manages to one-up its predecessor, in the sense that it’s even more gratuitous, over-the-top, and fetishistic than Zack Snyder’s stylistic adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel about the 300 Spartan warriors who held an invading Persian army of thousands at bay at the Battle … Continue reading
Granted, no one can (or should) go into “A Film by Paul W. S. Anderson” expecting quality film-making, so in a certain sense his historical melodrama Pompeii meets expectations; the flat acting and paint-by-numbers plot are only exceeded by the visual excess that carries it. A confounding hybrid of action-drama-love story and disaster flick, it’s Gladiator meets Krakatoa: East … Continue reading
When Jose Padhila’s RoboCop remake/reboot was announced two years ago it was met with a chorus of jeers so fervent they bordered on cries of “Heresy!”. Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi action spectacle is a cult classic, and as such it has a slightly over-inflated reputation. It certainly remains clever and groundbreaking, but in all fairness it … Continue reading
A lukewarm effort that fails to adequately plumb the depths of a winning premise, director/actor/screenwriter George Clooney’s The Monuments Men positions itself to make a grand commentary on the importance of art and its preservation — and then says little on the topic. Clooney and co-scripter Grant Heslov can’t seem to decide if they want … Continue reading
Jason Reitman showed an amazing degree of emotional acuity with his first three movies: Thank You for Smoking (2005), Juno (2007), and Up In the Air (2009); sadly, every single bit of that seems to have evaporated with his screen adaptation of Joyce Maynard’s 2009 novel Labor Day. As hokey and tone-deaf as it is implausible, this sloppy … Continue reading
As part of its Alamo 100 series, the Alamo Drafthouse will screen Charlie Chaplin’s silent comedy masterpiece City Lights (1931), noon, January 19, at the theater. Details The Magnolia’s Big Movie film series continues with the Martin Scorsese’s gangster classic Goodfellas (1990), 7:30 and 10:15pm, January 21, at the theater. Details Also for its Alamo 100 series, the Alamo Drafthouse will screen Steven … Continue reading
The first truly mediocre movie of 2014 has arrived. A well-meaning attempt to reboot the Jack Ryan franchise (if it can seriously be called that), Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is a surprisingly, disappointingly tepid thriller that succumbs to the same fatal flaw that sank Swordfish and its ilk: computer crime doesn’t make for great action … Continue reading
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