The Scream franchise is not one that wants to be taken seriously as a straight horror film. From the first iconoclastic installment so many years ago, its aim, it’s very raison d’être, was to call out the conventions of slasher films and then serve up a gory slashfest to an audience primed to laugh at… Read More »
INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE
INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE was released here in San Francisco without a press screening. And for good reason. I’m putting The Golden Raspberry Awards Foundation on notice that we might have a new frontrunner for next year’s Razzies. We begin on the eponymous holiday. Twenty years have passed since Steve Hiller (Will Smith, appearing in this… Read More »
THE LOSERS
THE LOSERS, based on the DC Vertigo Comic, is not great cinema, it is merely a great time at the movies, and there is no shame in that. Granted, its working with a run-of-the-mill plot involving a group of idealistic but profane misfits out to save the world from a an evil genius with no credit… Read More »
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN
With only five years since the last Spiderman blockbuster, it might have seemed too soon to reboot the franchise, THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, however, puts such worries to rest. The screenwriter is Steve Kloves, who has a keen understanding of character and story as evidence in his scripts for the Harry Potter films. Hes working up… Read More »
WHITE HOUSE DOWN
WHITE HOUSE DOWN is not a film of firsts. Its not the first film this year to depict an armed takeover of the eponymous building. And its not the first time that Roland Emmerich has destroyed it. He has, however, made it more fun than the other film, and only slightly more plausible than when… Read More »
DARKNESS FALLS
The best thing about DARKNESS FALLS is the fact that we will be able to settle once and for all whether or not there is a tooth fairy. If he or she exists, there is bound to be a lawsuit over how he or she is depicted in this film. Actually, not so much the depiction, though… Read More »
BASIC
The first words we hear Tom Hardy say in BASIC is in a conversation this ex-Army and currently DEA agent in Panama is having with a colleague, the gist of which is that if he doesnt have the trust of those around him, he cant function. Those are words that will figure greatly in the… Read More »
RUNDOWN, THE
One of the best moments in THE RUNDOWN is Christopher Walken, doing his own peculiar riff on being the heart of darkness, explaining through a translator to a group of Brazilian Indians just exactly what the Tooth Fairy is. Its also emblematic of what is best in this slam dunk of an action flick that… Read More »
ZODIAC (2007)
The pedestrian way to film the story of ZODIAC, the San Francisco Bay Area serial killer whose rampage extended from the late 1960s through the 1970s, would be to make a taut action thriller with snazzy directing tricks and gung-ho dialogue. Here was a psychopath who hunted people for sport and through a combination of smarts… Read More »