Calling a movie Newton’s Laws of Motion would probably have the potential audience running for the hills. Imagine it: Director and co-writer Alfonso Cuarón undertakes such an ambitious project, a movie set in Earth’s orbit with characters under constant threat of danger, but no one goes to see it because they think it’s a documentary […]
It’s that time of year between the end of summer and the beginning of the Oscar races when, traditionally, the genuine crap starts hitting the multiplexes. (You’ll also find crap from January to March, and, depending on your point of view, all year.) Rush, Ron Howard’s latest, is not crap. It isn’t Oscar-worthy, either, but […]
Let’s not mince words. It was a lackluster summer, movie-wise. For every decent surprise (Fast & Furious 6, which was better than it had any right to be; The Spectacular Now, which is a bittersweet rumination on growing up), there was a major letdown. Take Elysium. The Matt Damon-starring, Jodie Foster-supporting progressive sci-fi bloodfest should […]
When I think of Luc Besson or watch one of his movies, the thing I feel most is ambivalence. It’s refreshing to watch a guy use real violence in movies that are supposed to be comedies—violence isn’t all that funny, even when it’s played for laughs. A great example of horrific violence used for comedic […]
When we last left Richard B. Riddick (Vin Diesel), in the boringly-yet-appropriately titled The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), he was installed as the leader of the Necromongers, a race of humanoids bent on turning everyone in the universe into Scientologists. Whatever else happened in The Chronicles of Riddick has been long forgotten, mostly because it’s […]
“Tremendously shitty.” That’s the best phrase to describe the new Ethan Hawke-Selena Gomez (!) driving thriller Getaway, a movie in which characters can break the Internet in fewer than five seconds and a car can be armored to prevent total destruction, but the guy who armored it forgets long enough to send someone to shoot it up who didn’t bring armor piercing bullets.
Sorry, peeps. The World’s End just isn’t as good as Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, the other features in the Simon Pegg-Nick Frost-Edgar Wright canon. Luckily, The World’s End is still a lot of fun, and Pegg and Frost prove once again to be captivating screen presences and fully committed, especially when dealing […]
When we last left Mindy/Hit Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) and Dave/Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), one was fatherless and the other had blown up Chris/Red Mist’s father with a bazooka. It was some truly primal shit, made all the more bizarre by the fact that Hit Girl’s dad, Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage), was not revealed to be […]
It’s a good thing the heart of Lee Daniels’ The Butler is Forest Whitaker, because the movie has a great story to tell but gets in its own way. Whitaker keeps the movie centered amid the barrage of huge star cameos, corny dialogue, and choppy storytelling—plot threads come and go, unresolved—as Cecil Gaines, a White […]
We’re the Millers has the kind of story that can be hammered out in about 15 minutes, if its writers follow the “Save the Cat” formula. (Read this outline before you see it and you’ll actually see the story beats play out when you watch the movie.) The central plot—a pot dealer recruits three people […]