It is with no small measure of relief that I am able to say Marvel’s THE FANTASTIC 4: FIRST STEPS finally succeeds in bringing one of my childhood favorites to the screen. This iteration centers itself on the lively dynamics of the Richards-Storm-Grimm clan of biological and logical family such that the quartet’s greatest superpower… Read More »
KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
Let us frankly marvel at what technology can do. It can allow the gloss of an ape avatar to convey the most subtle and the most powerful of performances, complete with echoes of that human actor’s appearance, with flawless nuance. And so it is in THE KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. That same… Read More »
WAR OF THE WORLDS
There is a litany of inevitables in Steven Spielberg’s version of WAR OF THE WORLDS. There’s humanity turning on itself in a desperate scramble for survival. There are the vistas of CGI presenting hordes of extra-terrestrial killing machines cutting a swath across cities, suburbs and points rural. There are the seething tensions between an emotionally… Read More »
THE BLACK DAHLIA
There are so many missteps in Brian De Palma’s THE BLACK DAHLIA that one hardly knows where to start. Perhaps the best place is with the adaptation of James Ellroy’s novel of the same name. The book is a rich and vibrant work that provides too much fodder for a two-hour film to capture. Instead… Read More »