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A hybrid of The High and the Mighty and Leaving Las Vegas, the drama Flight is the kind of movie that could have easily slid into moralizing half-assed melodrama in lesser hands, but as handled by talented veteran director Robert Zemeckis (his first feature since the back-to-back releases of Cast Away and What Lies Beneath … Continue reading
Layered, ambitious, steeped in symbolism and philosophy, Cloud Atlas is almost everything you’d expect from a movie directed (or in this instance, co-directed) by the Wachowskis. “Almost” is a good thing in this instance, as the movie (based on David Mitchell’s novel) sheds most of the didacticism and visual excess that made the Matrix sequels … Continue reading
A classic misfire if there ever was one, Rob Cohen’s Alex Cross is intended to reboot the series based on the character made popular by James Patterson’s novels, previously played in two movies starring Morgan Freeman back in the ’90s. That comedy actor Tyler Perry (creator and star of the mega-popular Madea franchise) was cast in … Continue reading
With her suitably bleak and decidedly oblique adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic novel, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Andrea Arnold (“Wasp”, Red Road) delivers a Wuthering Heights that is as cold and distant as is it lush and atmospheric. Anyone with a prejudice against Gothic melodrama isn’t likely to have their minds changed here. For all that’s … Continue reading
A thinking man’s espionage thriller that gives weight to the notion that truth is indeed stranger than fiction, Argo quickly dispels any lingering doubts as to whether or not Ben Affleck’s recent acclaim as a director is just a fluke. Affleck directs with even more confidence and capability than he displayed in Gone Baby Gone … Continue reading
Funny, vulgar, blood-soaked, and stocked with wall-to-wall wackos, Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths showcases the Anglo-Irish playwright/filmmaker’s signature brand of absurdist pitch-black comedy, made infamous by his plays The Lieutenant of Inishmore and The Lonesome West. McDonagh leans on the metafiction more heavily this time than he did with his debut feature, In Bruges (2008), which often … Continue reading
Witty, scary, and darkly funny, Fright Night is one of those rare remakes that not only stands on its own but also improves on the original. It retains much of what made its ancestor a cult classic, while retooling it to have some sharper edges. Anton Yelchin stars as Charley Brewster, a high school senior … Continue reading
You’d think people would have learned to stop fucking with Liam Neeson by now. Let’s put it into perspective: In the past few years of his career alone he’s killed shitloads of terrorists, led the A-team, been a talking lion, slapped around half of ancient Greece, and taken on a pack of wolves with his … Continue reading
Smartly conceived and superbly realized, Looper is a high-concept action-thriller that doesn’t bury its viewers under superfluous detail, spin its wheels in a confusing plot, or wallow in its own cleverness. Writer-director Rian Johnson (the exceptional Brick and the not-so-much The Brothers Bloom) borrows tropes from the likes of The Terminator and 12 Monkeys, but what he delivers stands … Continue reading
Sleek, uncompromising, and smartly executed, David Ayer’s (Harsh Times) gritty cop drama End of Watch delivers a tightly written (and tightly wound) character-driven crime story wrapped around charismatic performances by Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena. It makes Training Day (also written by Ayer) look like a Sunday picnic, but by all rights End of Watch shouldn’t work worth … Continue reading
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