VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN begins by telling us that we have heard this story before. And we have. Sort of. The Frankenstein (James McAvoy) in question is the one that built the iconic monster out of spare human parts, but it’s Igor (Daniel Radcliffe), the man scientist’s assistant, who is our narrator, and it’s from his fresh,… Read More »
THE TRANSPORTER: (not) REFUELED
A few years ago I interview Patton Oswalt for YOUNG ADULT, and during the chat I asked him to expand on something that he had said with which I totally agreed: Jason Statham makes any movie better. (Click here for the interview and my mini-rant about how unfair it was that Oswalt didn’t get an… Read More »
A Pale Shadow of A POLTERGEIST
The original POLTERGEIST was said to have a curse attached to it. Perhaps because the producers opted to use real skeletons rather than models because they were cheaper. Perhaps because taunting the supernatural might tick off the wrong non-corporal entity. Aside from the deaths associated with members of the original cast and crew, certainly the… Read More »
SWEPT AWAY
When Lina Wertmuller, the elfin feminist gadfly of Italian cinema, made SWEPT AWAY back in 1974, it was a tantalizing and brutal take on the war between the sexes, between the classes and on the whole human comedy. When Guy Ritchie re-wrote the script for his wife, Madonna, I’m sure he thought it was a… Read More »
THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123
There are a few flaws in Tony Scott’s reworking of THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123, but the giddy exuberance of this character-driven thriller gets the audience over the rough spots with few regrets. The story has added cell phones and the internet to the mix without tarting up the proceedings with gratuitous special effects. It’s basically… Read More »
THE WOLFMAN
THE WOLFMAN hearkens back with great hope and poor follow-through to Universal’s classic horror films. There is much that is improved in this retelling of the original 1941 flick, and much that suffers a surfeit of technology. The story follows the original’s arc, with Lawrence Talbot suffering the bite of a werewolf, a band of… Read More »
SOLARIS
In a move as audacious as it is disastrous, Steve Soderbergh has decided to push the edges of what filmmaking can be and created in SOLARIS not so much a motion picture as a still life. One that is more sleep-inducing than a warm glass of milk and a bottle of Seconal. It is remarkable… Read More »
CRIMINAL
Greed makes the world go around, at least it does in the seedy world of CRIMINAL. This re-make of the Argentinian film, NINE QUEENS, has been re-imagined by writer/director Gregory Jacobs as a quirky daylight noir with a plot that spins on a dime as its twists and turns on its way to proving that it’s… Read More »
ALFIE
The thing about Jude Law is that he is so unbelievably beautiful. Such is his pulchritude, not to mention his irresistible onscreen charm, that its easy to overlook the undeniable acting chops that are greater even than the sum of his more ephemeral gifts. In ALFIE, Charles Shyer’s re-make of the 60s classic that starred… Read More »
THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX
THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX, 2004’s version of the 1965 film, which was, in turn based on the novel starts with a bang. It ends with another, even better one, but, alas, sags in the middle with too much exposition and not enough suspense. Though people doing very silly things qualifies as a sort of… Read More »