Few modern directors have the skill and precision to nail both large budget genre film and tiny indie projects. Steven Soderbergh embodies the concept of versatility with his second released film in under a year, Haywire. With his twenty-fifth film in twenty-two years Soderbergh branches out from his norm to the world of high action […]
Steig Larson’s Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a fast-paced, utterly engrossing, reactionarily feminist mystery novel, with a charismatic leading man and a fascinating lead female. But Larson’s novel falls off when you start thinking about writing style, thematic brilliance, or overall writerly aptitude. David Fincher’s Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, in contrast, is almost […]
Brad Bird, the man behind such films as The Incredibles and Ratatouille, shifts from the realm of animation to live action for the fourth installment of the Mission Impossible franchise. For those of you who haven’t seen the other three, fear not. MI4 is about as stand-alone as any sequel can get. If you’re looking […]
One of my non-obnoxious Film Studies TAs was struggling to explain to us the basics of plot. We were first year film students, dying to do avante-garde and unique things, and the idea of using standard structural elements to construct our opuses felt confining and uncomfortably like selling out. Then, she walks in one day […]
The official Hunger Games trailer hit the world like a flaming District 12 tribute today after Josh Hutcherson (who plays fan favourite Peeta Mellark) introduced it on Good Morning America. The superb, pulse-pounding teaser kicks off with the serene Jennifer Lawrence as heroine Katniss Everdeen meeting her tried and true best friend Gale (Liam Hemsworth) […]
Ryan Gosling is on top of the world. With no fewer than 3 major major movies currently in theatres and Oscar buzz starting up again, Gosling is named-checked as The Guy right now, the one that all other men are stuck never living up to. But Ryan Gosling is a gangly Ontarian with floppy hair […]
What if the director of one of the most enjoyable superhero movies of the past ten years (Jon Favreau) and the charismatic star of the well-received James Bond remake (Daniel Craig) teamed up with a rough and tumble Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) to make a movies western that features extraterrestrial life, and whose title is […]
Watching Captain America feels a whole lot like watching a so-so pilot episode for a TV show you really want to watch. In there are all the elements that you know you’re one day going to love (more on that later), but the actual substance of the episode seems more about putting the pieces in […]