9 years ago
Reviews (10 posts found)
“X-Men: Days of Future Past”: All The Mutants and Pep Talks You Could Ask For
After 61 live-action feature-length DC Comics movies and Marvel Comics pictures, there’s bound to be a bushel of subpar apples in the multi-billion dollar barrel. The 62nd picture hails the return of Bryan Singer to the franchise he helped put on the box offic...
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‘Words and Pictures’ (That We’ve Seen Many Times Before)
If any given scene from Words and Pictures was taken out and presented devoid of context, it would play perfectly as a joke scene that a show like The Simpsons might make up as a parody of cliched romantic comedies. It's not so much that the film has a stock p...
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I Ain’t Afraid of No “Stage Fright”
I had a dream this movie would be -- So different from the shit I'm watching! A dream of a funny yet bloody musical horror comedy. But now that dream is dead, and all that's left is Stage Fright.
The curtain rises: Minnie Driver plays a Christine Daaé-esque s...
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“Million Dollar Arm” Throws a Neat Double Play
Disney has cornered the market on “based on a true story” sports movies. Million Dollar Arm is their latest contribution to the genre that includes Cool Runnings, The Rookie and Remember the Titans, among others. Their patented studio recipe is evident: Combin...
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“The Immigrant” Displays James Gray At His Best
The bronze color filter of The Immigrant stands apart from the romanticized sepias that typically shade period films. Its yellow-brown hue is grimy and dirty, as if shot through industrial pollution instead of an ancient lens. The skies around Ellis Island and...
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“Godzilla” Destroys Effing Everything
2014 is the year Toho's favorite son, Godzilla, turns 60. It's also the year that the vaunted American studio system tries its hand again at appropriating the iconic granddaddy of all kaiju for entertainment purposes, Roland Emmerich be damned. Why Godzilla? W...
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John Slattery Gets Lost in “God’s Pocket”
It's fitting, perhaps, that, as far as I can tell, there is no such neighborhood as God's Pocket. It's a literary device. I read that the novel upon which John Slattery's directorial debut is based sets its action in Philadelphia, where its writer, Pete Dexter...
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“The Double”: A Harmonious Blend of Orwellian Paranoia and Kafkaesque Psychological Terror
The Double opens with a medium close-up shot of Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg), seated in a moving train. The lights in the tunnel fill the frame intermittently, as do the eerily flickering lights in the train car. Simon seems lost in the disturbing harmony of ...
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Jon Favreau’s “Chef” Not Thoroughly Cooked
The camera slowly pans over freshly washed vegetables glistening in an expensive looking wooden bowl. Slabs of steak shine under the lights until thrown onto a hissing skillet. Fruits are sliced and diced so carefully and exact, you know your meal is in the ha...
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“Neighbors”: Who Wouldn’t Want Zac Efron As One of Theirs?
Neighbors depicts the only possible scenario in which someone wouldn't want Zac Efron to live next door. Mac (Seth Rogen) and Kelly (Rose Byrne) are a young couple who are adjusting to a new life with a baby, a house and adulthood. Finally everything has falle...
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