Just as I was thinking what a waste Tom Hardy was in VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE, I remembered that Mr. Hardy, who was so impressive in INCEPTION, MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, and a slew of other films, co-produced this sequel to VENOM, and also came up with the story. The… Read More »
SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY
Click here for the flashback interview with Alden Ehrenreich for BEAUTIFUL CREATURES. SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY annotates and amplifies the mythos surrounding that devilish anti-hero of the franchise, Han Solo. Set well before the events of EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE, it introduces us to Han before he learned to fly, but after he… Read More »
WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES
There is something heartening in a sequel to a sequel that is as good as the original. Imagine how much more heartening it is that WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES, the third in the trilogy that launched with the excellent DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES and continued with the equally excellent… Read More »
NOW YOU SEE ME 2
The best caper films keep us guessing even while we’re watching the caper in progress. In that way, NOW YOU SEE ME 2 succeeds admirably. The return of the The Horsemen, a band of underground magicians dedicated to truth, justice, and outsmarting everyone around them, including each other, provides several set pieces that are fine… Read More »
THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY — Part 2
THE HUNGER GAMES may be based on a wildly popular young adult series of novels, but the film adaptations have always tackled issues that are powerfully adult and presented as such. Set in an unspecified future, the class system has run so wild that the life and death of the proletariat class has become institutionalized… Read More »
THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY — PART 1
THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY — PART 1 is not unlike its iconic heroine, Katniss Everdeen. It’s bold, headstrong, no-nonsense, and impatient to get on with things. It begins almost directly from whence the last installment of the saga left off, and with little if any exposition about anything that happened before. For example, why those… Read More »
TRANSSIBEREAN
TRANSSIBEREAN hearkens back to those glorious tales of intrigue and adventure that populated film screen in the 30s and 40s. In those days, it was trains that whisked people over vast distances and the close quarters with strangers of all sorts forced together in them was a situation rife with possibilities. Throw in a foreign… Read More »
ZOMBIELAND
In ZOMBIELAND, the living dead, cannibals, of course, have overrun the U S of A, and while that is a bad thing, at least they have gotten one young man out of the house. On one level, this is a tale of that young mans search for love and the family he always wanted, but… Read More »
2012
With 2012 you got your big special effects, you got your overwrought melodrama, you got your colorful supporting characters, a passel of kids of varying cuteness, outrageous puns, and a plucky dog. What you got here is blockbuster of a popcorn flick that delivers on ending the world as we know it and takes a… Read More »
NOW YOU SEE ME
NOW YOU SEE ME begins with a giddy sense of mischief and ends with a contrivance that bespeaks the desperation of failing to plan for a proper ending. In between, it quietly devolves from slam-bang fun to barely coherent as four magicians lead the FBI and a debunker on a merry chase through ancient mysticism… Read More »