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Easily the most powerful, compelling, devastating, and just plain blunt film about slavery ever made, Steve McQueen’s adaptation of Solomon Northup’s 1853 memoir, 12 Years a Slave is a raw and searing indictment. it plumbs the depths of that Lincoln and Django Unchained only skimmed. Northup’s dark odyssey is a harrowing one: A free man in … Continue reading
It may be cinephile blasphemy to suggest it, but Kimberly Peirce’s remake of Carrie isn’t the worst thing to hit the screen, and at times it’s fairly entertaining. Whether or not it’s existence is justifiable is a matter of personal taste (read: how rabid a fan you are of Brian De Palma’s 1976 cult classic). … Continue reading
A scatter-shot piece of action pulp, Escape Plan is a sluggish ride broken-up with a few cheap thrills along the way. The only hook here is the teaming of genre icons Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger in full-on buddy mode. It’s thankfully free of fan service, meta-humor, and lofty aspirations, though it does perform a … Continue reading
Paul Greengrass (United 93, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ulitmatum) continues his reign as the master of post-9/11 angst and grit, this time turning the true story of Captain Rich Phillips into a high-seas hostage drama that not only gives the Academy Award-nominated director a chance to flex his muscle in a slightly different … Continue reading
One of the most impressive feats of subversive, satirical stunt film-making in years, Randy Moore’s debut feature Escape From Tomorrow bursts the saccharine-sweet bubble that is the Disney empire without resorting to mean-spiritedness, taking the notion that a shiny surface conceals an equally dark underbelly and running with it like an Olympic sprinter on amphetamines. It’s less … Continue reading
Perhaps the hardest hard-science fiction movie to date, Gravity is both a breath-taking, sometimes awe-inspiring, and often chilling examination the dangers of space exploration, what it takes to endure this harshest of environments, and a confrontation with mortality. Or to put bluntly: It makes Apollo 13 look like Capricorn One. Co-written by Alfonso Cuarón and … Continue reading
An atypical biopic wrapped in slick formula and sleek visuals, Ron Howard’s Rush is the director’s meatiest work since Frost/Nixon (2008). Both films were written by Peter Morgan and share an odd kinship, focusing on a unique pair of polar-opposite rivals who thrive when positioned as frenemies. Howard and Morgan make the very non-cinematic sport … Continue reading
A slickly realized concert movie that cranks from the 3-D and IMAX formats the kind of immersive energy that most feature films can only dream of, Metallica: Through the Never is a suitably gonzo rock spectacle worthy of the band and the expectations of its legion of fans. Some 30 years into their career, Metallica … Continue reading
Wisely smaller in scope yet appropriately over-the-top, writer-director David Twohy and actor Vin Diesel’s return to the character who helped put both of them on the map some 15 years ago, Riddick is sci-fi pulp cheese that will satisfy fans if little else. An escaped con with night vision eyes, Riddick became a surprise cult … Continue reading
The third collaboration between writer-director Edgar Wright and actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, The World’s End pulls off an impressive feat at the tail-end of a summer movie season loaded to the gills with varying apocalypses and mind-numbing scenes of mass destruction by finding humor in Armageddon, outdoing the similarly themed This is the … Continue reading
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