Steven Soderbergh is an executive producer of MAGIC MIKE XXL, but that is the only trace of that director to be found in this sequel that is more about joy than angst. Channing Tatum, returning as the eponymous male stripper, has taken the fun and dazzle from the original and eschewed most of the cerebral… Read More »
Gareth Davis and Iko Uwais Undertake THE RAID 2: BERENDAL
The one question writer/director Gareth Evans hates is the one about how a Welshman became the leading light of Indonesian cinema. So I didn’t ask. There was too much to discuss anyway about his masterpiece, THE RAID 2: BERENDAL. According to both men, it was all about the details, From choreographing a stunning prison riot that… Read More »
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 — Jay Baruchel, America Ferrara, Dean Deblois & Bonnie Arnold
Interviewing four people at once can be daunting when it comes to getting everyone to join in the conversation, but the gang from the Dreamworks animated film HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 had spent so much time together since the making of DRAGON 1, that they were almost a single entity. When I spoke… 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 »
TERMINATOR SALVATION
For all the explosions, gunfire, firestorms, and manly gnashing of teeth, TERMINTATOR SALVATION has an overriding weariness to it. The franchise, while robust box-office wise, has essentially been telling the same story now for a quarter of a century. A tale of time-travel, murderous cyborgs, and a father born decades after his son’s conception is… Read More »
SHREK FOREVER AFTER
The magic is back. SHREK FOREVER AFTER has recaptured everything that made the original so great, including the attitude of William Steig, the author of the original Shrek book, while keeping those elements that worked in the subsequent installments. Which is to say, there is nothing of the third to be found here. Shrek (Mike… Read More »
WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS
The death of one person is a tragedy, so the saying goes, but the death of a million people is a statistic. This is the model Oliver Stone has chosen for his latest history lesson for the masses, WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS, an explication of why the world financial markets collapsed in 2008. By… Read More »
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART 1
It might be hard for someone unfamiliar with the Harry Potter universe to catch the nuances of HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART 1. Fortunately, the larger themes are intact, despite some liberties taken with the chronology of the books and the usual necessity of streamlining a richly plotted novel into a workable screenplay.… Read More »
THE SANTA CLAUSE 2
You have to admire the folks behind THE SANTA CLAUSE II. In this sequel-happy world, they didn’t rush right out to cash in on the success of the original. Instead, they waited eight whole years for a good premise before venturing back, and when you consider that in kids’ years that’s a whole generation, it was a… Read More »
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART 2
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART 2 begins with a bang and doesn’t stop. Starting right where the last film ended, it barely has time to catch its breath, or go into florid exposition, before diving right into the final face-off between the boy, now man, wizard (Daniel Radcliffe), embodiment of all that is… Read More »
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