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When one of Shakespeare’s plays is done right, it reminds you why his works have survived four centuries and counting. When done wrong — or indifferently, as with Joss Whedon’s self-consciously twee take on Much Ado About Nothing — you feel every tedious second of it. On the surface it seems like a good fit … Continue reading
Calling This Is the End the best comedy of the year (so far) may seem like a back-handed compliment given the competition, but it truly delivers the laughs as well as energy that recent comedies have been lacking. You can tell its cast is fully engaged with the material and having the time of their … Continue reading
Aside from the Batman franchise, Warner Bros. has been behind the curve in developing a cinematic universe for their own superheroes; the owners of scores of fan-favorite characters, they’ve developed little else recent years beyond the misfire Green Lantern and a rejected pilot for a Wonder Woman TV series. Although Man of Steel falters in the final reel, it raises … Continue reading
For the past few years, critiquing a movie by M. Night Shyamalan has been something akin to shooting fish in a barrel with a rocket launcher. The auteur wowed viewers with his carefully crafted The Sixth Sense in 1999, but he’s failed to live up to his potential since then. In fact, the quality of … Continue reading
A funny thing happened at the megaplexes last summer. That was when Fast Five debuted, and unexpectedly crystallized the formula of what had to that point been a very formulaic franchise. The restraints came off, any last remaining vestiges of logic were shed, and a ragtag group of action heroes were assembled with Avengers-esque grandeur for … Continue reading
The latest entry into the long-running Star Trek franchise finds the series still boldly going, though not quite where no one has gone before. When the reboot movie Star Trek was released in 2009, it re-invigorated the franchise and left its future wide open; Star Trek Into Darkness sees it backtrack a bit a recover what … Continue reading
Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce’s gaudy adaptation of The Great Gatsby hits all the high points but plumbs few of the depths of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great American novel. It’s a cartoon take on the classic novel of one man’s collision with the American dream during the Roaring Twenties, and much like its characters it … Continue reading
A rare threequel that finds new ground to till rather than a rehash of what came before, Iron Man 3 proves that not only is there life after The Avengers, there’s still plenty of mileage left in the tanks of superhero-themed movies. The early buzz has proclaimed it to be the best Marvel movie yet; … Continue reading
Writer-director-actor-polymath Shane Carruth’s abstract, fearless, and utterly absorbing Upstream Color doesn’t reinvent cinema, but it does remind us what cinema can do when we are willing to put ourselves at the mercy of a filmmaker’s vision. Abstract, mesmerizing, allegorical to the core, and willing to forge its own structure for the sake of telling a … Continue reading
Director Joseph Kosinski made a tepid debut 2010 years ago with stylish but hollow sequel Tron 2.0. There is just as much style in his latest science fiction spectacle, but at least this time around it’s in the service of a high-falutin story that isn’t afraid to inject a little mystery into a well-worn but … Continue reading
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