A good movie adaptation of a a good book teases something out of the text. It figures out what is important about the text, what has made it resonate with literary audiences for years. It takes a stand on what it’s adapting, and adds something to it besides just flesh and blood rendering. It’s on […]
These last couple of years or so have been very big for the, now proven but always sort of suspected, multi-talented artist, director, producer, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Having secured and fairly prominent roles in critically acclaimed films such as 500 Days Of Summer, The Dark Knight, Inception, and Looper, Levitt has certainly made a name for […]
Gravity is not so much a movie as it is an experience. It’s rare that I insist on seeing a film in one of the more expensive formats. Especially if you live in a big city, movie tickets are obscenely expensive to begin with, and once you’ve tacked on 3D and Imax you’re looking upwards […]
He needs no introduction, but rather a streetcar for his classy, self-centered, delusional, broke-to-the teeth heroine Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) to get her to the doorsteps of her sister… ”Stella!” Actually Ginger (Sally Hawkins). Embodying the stunning elegance and characteristics of Tennessee Williams’ extravagant Blanche DuBois, Woody Allen’s Jasmine, instead rolls out of a cab with […]
First Published: July 12, 2013 There’s something about spectacle. The book version of World War Z was all about the literary spectacle, taking the normally claustrophobic zombie story and blowing it up, writ large across the worldwide campus. I’ve always described it as Contagion with zombies – a world wide, political thriller that just happened […]
First Published: May 25, 2013 DISCLAIMER: I really, really liked Star Trek: Into Darkness. I’d like to start off just saying that. But my feelings about it are a bit complicated, so complicated they’ve ripped this very review in half. Check out HERE for the other half. Star Trek: Into Darkness is an exciting, smart, […]
As Rachael already found out when she tried to read it a few years ago, The Mortal Instruments (movie) didn’t start out with particularly great source material. Like a certain sparkly vampire story before it, City of Bones was under-written and under-imaginative, with occasionally funny characters and semi-intriguing plot, but completely undone by the author’s […]
In the race to make a movie about polarizing Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, I fear that everyone may have lost. Unlike last year’s not-so-epic Battle of the Snow Whites, I don’t know if there ever was going to be room for two Jobs movies. Whoever made it first was going to be the person who […]