Looper, the newest sci-fi thriller from wunderkind director Rian Johnson, is a rare thing: it’s a perfect movie. By that I don’t mean it’s the world’s best movie, or even the year’s best. What I mean is that Johnson and his crew created a movie that manages to perfectly embody its own story and […]
With found footage movies on life support, writer and director David Ayer hopes to reanimate the genre with his first-person buddy cop action film, End of Watch. Having written Training Day, Mr. Ayer certainly had the street credentials for the job, but his flashy and ornate homage to the television show Cops, the original forbearer […]
I’m sure you didn’t walk into the first Expendables expecting anything too serious and I can truthfully declare that you shouldn’t expect anything deeper or more meaningful than that when checking out the star studded sequel. With the same all-star action film line up from the first film along with some killer new additions, The […]
When I was a kid, my first superhero love was Spiderman. In his cartoon incarnation, he was a wise-cracking, semi-nerdy photographer who just seemed to stumble into crime fighting. He was good-hearted and goofy, and he earned his super powers by supplementing with scientific curiosity and goodwill. When Sam Raimi’s version of the character came […]
We have learned over the years that there are good sequels, and very bad sequels. Men in Black was a great movie, but MIB2 was a royal stinker. I’m pleased to report that MIB3 is the sequel that makes up for the second film. It’s so good that, when I saw it, the audience applauded as […]
As a film fan, it is one of the great pleasures in life to get to see the intersection of your favorite person producing entertainment and your favorite genre of entertainment. As a reviewer, it’s kind of hell. Fan girl gushing does not make for well reasoned, thoughtful pieces of criticism, and despite my over-reliance […]
While American politicians abjectly deride the Scandinavians for being ‘pinko commies’, Hollywood has been taking notice of their considerable cinematic talent, finding every opportunity to import some of their best films for American remakes. David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Matt Reeves’ Let Me In are excellent examples, but no Scandinavian film […]
When you sit down to watch a buddy cop film you know what to expect; two mismatched partners find friendship as they solve an important case and involve themselves in each other’s lives. The paradigms of the genre have been set, our expectations skewed, and as an audience we have been emotionally conditioned to react […]