When a once profitable film franchise begins to fade, the studios that have reaped the benefits of same are left with little choice about how to handle it. With so much money at stake, both in ticket sales and ancillary merchandise on the line, they can’t just let it slip away with dignity. No, they… Read More »
THE COMMUTER
It’s all about what you want from a Liam Neeson action flick. That and managing expectations. Will it be great art? Probably not. Will it be fun? Maybe. In this case, it is. In THE COMMUTER, Neeson is an ordinary ex-cop turned insurance salesman named Mike, living paycheck to paycheck with his beloved wife (Elizabeth… Read More »
SILENCE
Academics are taught to write with a dispassionate yet highly detailed style for their scholarly treatises. That is the approach that Martin Scorsese has taken with SILENCE, his philosophically dense and immaculately rendered film of Shusaku Endo’s book of the same name. The result is a maddening film more to be admired than enjoyed as… Read More »
RUN ALL NIGHT with Liam Neeson
There is a reason that there is a rigid formula for Liam Neeson action films: it has a tendency to hit more than it misses. In RUN ALL NIGHT, the tropes are all present and accounted for with the variations that are permitted within the formula’s rules. Neeson is the everyman with, you will pardon… Read More »
TAKEN 3
And so once again we are in the company of Bryan Mills and his very specific skill set as brought to life by the incomparable Liam Neeson. The one-man demolition squad, trained by the darkest of black ops, is once again called into action when his family is threatened. Fortunately, this is no irksome… Read More »
PONYO (GAKE NO UE NO PONYO)
Hayao Miyasakis PONYO is a sweet-natured flight of fantasy that lacks any real sense of conflict or danger. It makes up for it, at least for the younger set, with a delightfully absurd internal logic that is perfectly keyed into the way small children see the world. All things are possible, including a little girl… Read More »
CLASH OF THE TITANS
It takes about 15 minutes to realize that the remake of CLASH OF THE TITANS is an irredeemable loss. Unfortunately, there is still another 105 minutes or so to endure until the ordeal is over. Where the original, no masterpiece to be sure, had a cheesy sort of charm, this offers only the irritation of… Read More »
AFTER.LIFE
AFTER.LIFE tries to be a thoughtful consideration of what it means to be alive, but instead devolves into an advertisement for red lingerie and mortuary science as a challenging career choice. The lingerie is a short charmuese slip worn through most of the film by co-star Christina Ricci, whose wardrober receives a special credit. The… Read More »
THE A-TEAM
The biggest mistake in making a testosterone-fueled action fantasy is to have it take itself too seriously. THE A-TEAM doesnt fall into that trap. Instead, it takes everything that was fun about the series on which it was based and amps it up into stratospherically ridiculous heights. And it does so with an irresistible insouciance… Read More »
NEXT THREE DAYS, THE
Based on the infinitely superior French thriller, POUR ELLE, THE NEXT THREE DAYS is a road kill of a thriller. Flattened beyond recognition as being its particular genre, and with all its vital, life-giving juices mercilessly squished out of it. Whats left is a pulpy mess that is by turns painfully protracted and irritatingly stupid. Russell Crowe,… Read More »