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It’s almost impressive that director Timur Bekmambetov (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) had the gumption to remake a cinematic icon. Unfortunately, that’s the extent of his daring. He opts to play it safe and more than a little toothless with the godfather of Biblical epics, rather than going for broke with a more stylized interpretation. As a result, there’s not of … Continue reading
It’s ironic and inevitable that after four movies a franchise about a super-spy/super-soldier with amnesia would start to develop a feeling of deja vu. Its predecessors have always been cutting edge, gritty, faced-paced, timely, and raw in their sensibilities; but with Jason Bourne the world seems to have caught up with the franchise. Its style has … Continue reading
Less pompous than Greystoke (1984) but more cartoonish than Disney’s 1999 animated version of the material, The Legend of Tarzan is pretty to look at but ultimately hollow and occasionally shoddy. This latest adaptation of Edgar Rice Burrough’s pulp character hinges on a clever premise with a built-in conflict, mainly the early days of King Leopold II … Continue reading
A fun piece of throwaway cinema, The Shallows is a sleek, beautifully shot, and mostly satisfying thriller that plays it smart and simple, only faltering by opting for a schlocky climax. It’s not the new Jaws by any stretch of the imagination, but where that movie transcended genre, The Shallows cleverly plays with it. Blake Lively (Green Lantern, … Continue reading
It’s tempting to call Green Room the punk successor to Deliverance, but that glosses over the brilliance writer-director Jeremy Saulnier’s smart, ferocious, blood-soaked thriller. His previous film, Blue Ruin, was an art house family drama disguised as a B-grade revenge flick; Green Room is a B-grade exploitation thriller with art house sensibilities. It’s schlock so smartly written … Continue reading
Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s (Birdman) fact-based frontier revenge saga The Revenant has an unnerving way of lodging itself in the back of one’s mind for days. Equal parts beautiful and brutal, it’s easily one of the most unsettling films of the past few years. It’s also one of the best. Its setting is a particularly harsh time … Continue reading
Ron Howard’s latest may strengthen the clichéd argument that “truth is stranger than fiction”, but it also suggests that it is often more boring, too. Howard and screenwriter Charles Leavitt half-heartedly adapt Nathaniel Philbrick’s novel of the same name, itself a fictionalized account of the true story of the ill-fated whaling ship Essex, the inspiration for Herman … Continue reading
Justin Kurzel’s free-handed and visceral adaptation of “the Scottish play” is sure to irritate the hell out of English Lit. majors and Shakespeare purists; it’s also incredibly entertaining, visually stunning, and perfectly drenched in mud, blood, and madness. The story of the ambitious Scottish noble who murders his way to power at the prediction of a … Continue reading
Biopics are often tributes to eccentrics with grandiose — and often unusual — obsessions. In the case of The Walk, veteran filmmaker Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future and Forrest Gump) has found a subject with a curious fixation indeed, and while the movie stumbles a bit early on, it (ahem) never falls. The subject here is Phillipe … Continue reading
Sicario is the moral-grey-zone crime drama for those of us who felt burned by season 2 of True Detective. There are few heroes and even fewer clearly defined villains in this taught, gruesome, and disquieting narco-thriller written by Taylor Sheridan and directed by Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners). Unlike other films that posit the need to go to extremes to win … Continue reading
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