The best moment in THE LOVE GURU is right at the beginning. It’s when Stephen Colbert first appears as a deranged sports commentator. Cling to that moment, because even when he pops up again, it won’t be the same. It will be after this revolting excrescence in which he is appearing has infected your eyes… Read More »
MACHETE
MACHETE, Robert Rodriquezs homage to grindhouse genre, is a bracing concretion of advocacy filmmaking and raucous hyperbole. In spirit, it is the unexpected successor to the likes of Rabelais, who used giants and satire to bring low the status quo. The giant here is the title character (Danny Trejo), a former Mexican federal agent out… Read More »
FANSTASTIC FOUR
It’s Ioan Gruffudd for whom I feel the most sorry. He’s a fine British actor who distinguished himself in, among other efforts, the most recent television adaptation of THE FORSYTE SAGA. In FANTASTIC 4, he’s relegated to the role of an earnest, if super smart, beagle. As the first installment of what the studio… Read More »
INTO THE BLUE
Hard bodies, blue water, and a passel of music video moments strung together into the running time of a motion picture is what INTO THE BLUE is all about. It may silly, but at least it’s not offensive. The bodies in the persons of Jessica Alba and Paul Walker are taut and toned to perfection.… Read More »
FANTASTIC FOUR — RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER
As FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER begins, there is no doubt about what the audience is in for. A planet dissolves before our very eyes, and with special effects that could most charitably be described as inferior. And so it goes for the rest of the flick. It soon becomes apparent that this… Read More »
GOOD LUCK CHUCK
It’s not like one goes into a film like GOOD LUCK CHUCK with great expectations. And so it is all the more remarkable, dispiriting rather, when even a low bar, a very lowered bar, isn’t met. This flick isn’t just bad, it falls into that rare category of works that are actual harbingers of the… Read More »
THE EYE
THE EYE, released without a press screening, is a tidy enough little supernatural thriller. A soupcon light on the thrills part it may be, but it makes up for it with a nicely rendered eeriness that pays appropriate homage to the Pang Brothers flick of the same name on which it is based. One can… Read More »