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 »
INSURGENT Keeps the DIVERGENT Franchise Puffing Along
The advantage of seeing outstanding actors in a middling film is that you can appreciate just how good they are on a whole new level. And INSURGENT is certainly a middling film, though that is an improvement on the last installment in this franchise, DIVERGENT. With a new director, Robert Schwentke, bringing Veronica Roth’s YA… Read More »
A Choppy CHAPPIE
CHAPPIE is a cross between Pinicchio and ROBOCOP with a dash of DISTRICT 9. That last is unsurprising because CHAPPIE is the brainchild of Neill Blomkamp, and many of the elements at work in that earlier film about the meaning of humanity are at work in this one. The battleground is still South Africa, Blomkamp’s… Read More »
JUPITER ASCENDING. Not.
The Wachowskis know how to produce a spectacle. In that, they may very well be the cinematic heirs of Cecil B. DeMille, whose films featured showmanship of the highest caliber, but some of whose films could charitably be described as insubstantial. And such is the case with the space saga, JUPITER ASCENDING, a film chock-a-block… Read More »
MORTDECAI is DOA
Sneaking into theaters without benefit of a press screening, MORTDECAI is a tragically unfunny attempt at lighthearted comedy. Based on the novel Don’t Point that That Thing at Me” by Kyril Bongfiglio, its efforts at whimsy fall flat, while its attempts to attain the quirky begin and end with the waxy curls of Johnny Depp’s… 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 »
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 »
THE HOMESMAN
Tommy Lee Jones is a dour man, at least on screen. His carefully cultivated persona is a laconic one of few words and little patience. It is a character that he plays to perfection, and in THE HOMESMAN,he imbues it with a wonderful, understated quirkiness that makes his star quality all the more charismatic. As… Read More »
JOHN WICK
JOHN WICK is a sleek and unrepentant film about revenge and redemption. Set in a parallel world to ours, one populated by criminals who live by a strict set of rules, conventions, and etiquette, it is a dark fantasy of violence in which the hero isn’t the pacifist, it’s the guy who really loves his… Read More »
KUNG FU PANDA
In the grand tradition of the DRUNKEN MASTER series, the one in which the hero could only wage righteous martial arts warfare when in an advanced state of inebriation, comes KUNG FU PANDA, about a bear that can only wage righteous martial arts warfare when, well, that’s the problem. Po is the unlikely eponymous panda… Read More »
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