JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 starts with Mr. Wick doing what he does best. That would be mowing his way through a horde of adversaries with a cool precision and a lethal effect. While he is doing this, we are reminded, or introduced to, if we haven’t see the first film, just who exactly Mr. Wick… Read More »
ICE AGE: COLLISON COURSE
The Ice Age series has always gone more for the heart that the funny bone, though there is no denying that Scrat’s eternal and Sisyphean struggle both to acquire and to retain the acorn he’s been chasing through the four previous films has, in equal parts, both hilarity and a keen commentary on the noble struggle of humankind against a basically unfeeling universe.
SISTERS
The one questions that reverberates through SISTERS is why didn’t the stars, Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, write the script? They are producers, after all, and would seem, therefore, to have the clout to get any script that they wanted made, and yet, they have opted to squander their considerable talents on an egregiously plug-and-play… Read More »
AMERICAN ULTRA
There is a bold sense of anarchy to AMERICAN ULTRA that is as unrepentant as it is unpredictable.
THE HAPPENING
THE HAPPENING can be most charitably described as clumsy and moribund. Clumsy in the way the premise of how exactly it is that nature is taking its revenge on humankind is presented, and moribund in its determined hushed and whispering tone. Now, the hushed whispering tone is very effective in a well done mood piece.… Read More »
EMPIRE
EMPIRE is a nitty, gritty look at life on the mean streets of the wrong part of New York. Its message, crime doesn’t pay, isn’t a new one, but any film that proffers a moral compass is one worth paying attention to. Also worth paying attention to is co-producer John Leguizamo’s performance as Victor Rosa,… Read More »
LAND OF THE DEAD
Zombies are intrinsically disturbing yet compelling. Dead, yet walking, stupid, yet lethal, slow, yet relentless. Never mind being unsightly. They are as perfect a fodder for metaphor as the brains of the living are for the zombies themselves, a conceit that George A. Romero has a particular knack for locking onto, as evidenced by his… Read More »