You have to wade through a great deal of treacle in GRAN TURISMO before you get to part of the film that really works. Based (very loosely) on the true story of the gamer who became a race car driver, the first act plays like a very well executed cliché, albeit with a superbly edited… Read More »
THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES
And so it is our last visit to Middle Earth, and a bittersweet one it is. Peter Jackson’s finale to his pair of trilogies is a triumph of spectacle and humanity, notwithstanding that the human beings of the piece are not the main characters. It’s only flaw, and that is a relative one, is that… Read More »
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL
The idea behind PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN is enough to make even the most hopeful of reviewers cringe mightily and reach for an aspirin and an antacid. It’s not based on a book, a play, or even a scenario that can be summed up in one sentence in a pitch meeting. It’s based on a… Read More »
TROY
Cassandra, my favorite character from Homers Iliad, is missing from TROY, Wolfgang Petersons timely meditation of the futility of war. Its not the only change in this handsomely mounted retelling of the mythic tale of the Trojan War. The others are more in keeping with Petersens theme, though jarring for those familiar with the story… Read More »
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
While Ridley Scott was busy filling THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, his saga of the Crusades, with sweeping vistas of warfare, oceans of soldiers bent on carnage, and forests of siege engines gliding purposefully towards embattled Jerusalem, he forgot to add a story that would engross an audience. Or even work up a ripple in interest.… Read More »
ELIZABETHTOWN
If you are lucky enough to somehow manage to see only the first ten minutes or so of Cameron Crowe’s ELIZABETHTOWN, you will come away thinking that this has the makings of something interesting, dark, and just a little iconoclastic. Alas, it is followed by almost two hours of meandering randomness that quickly dispenses with… Read More »
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN — DEAD MAN’S CHEST
The original PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL offered up the unexpected delight of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, a joyfully addled pirate redux. He shared top billing with his co-stars, Orlando Bloom as the stalwart Will Turner and Keira Knightly as the plucky Elizabeth Swann, but it was Depp… Read More »
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN — AT WORLD’S END
It’s as though the people involved with PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END gave a great deal of thought to where exactly they hadn’t taken their heroes, villains, and Jack Sparrow, who is both and neither. Singapore, for one, and so the sequence in the seamier parts of that location. The polar climes, and… Read More »