Walking out of Live Free or Die Hard, my first thought was, ‘Man, we could really use another Die Hard right about now.’ Some of you may not have been alive at the time, but the original Die Hard was a landmark because of how it went against the grain of the other action movies … Continue reading
I’m A Cyborg, But That’s OK is playing as part of the New York Asian Film Festival. You can see the movie on Sunday, June 24 at 6:20pm at the IFC Center, or Saturday, June 30 at 8:15pm at the IFC Center. Click here to buy tickets. Every filmmaker eventually fumbles. It’s just the odds … Continue reading
Before seeing A Mighty Heart I made a mistake – I thought I knew what to expect from Michael Winterbottom’s new film. I knew that Winterbottom is driven to jump genres, and I assumed that A Mighty Heart was exactly what it was being sold as: a weepy tearjerker strong woman movie. It turns out … Continue reading
It’s easy to find commentary about the one-note nature of summer films. Doesn’t take a think tank to understand that May through July are given over to sixteen year old boys, with the occasional nod to 30-year old boys through a film like Ocean’s Thirteen. Counter-programming is an easy way for a studio to make … Continue reading
There is no movie here. The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer does many things most movies do in that it features a variety of characters striving to attain a variety of objectives, many of which are in direct opposition to one another. This is called conflict, and, in a classical narrative motion picture, … Continue reading
So this is the Fantastic Four in 2007. Body by CGI. Direction by Kodak. Fantasticar by Dodge. Yeah, it’s got a Hemi.* Stan Lee and Jack Kirby launched a new era of comic book superheroes with this team. They were real(ish) people with relationships and problems…like a grumpy Mole Man living under New York City. … Continue reading
What do you want from a movie featuring Danny Ocean and friends? Are you looking for a clockwork heist, or a light glimpse into the cult of personality that surrounds Clooney, Pitt, et al? Stung by the dismissal of Ocean’s Twelve, Soderbergh and company have gone light on the self-referential jokes (though they’re still here, … Continue reading
The second half of this review is loaded with spoilers. Please avoid scrolling to the end if you haven’t seen the movie. The final grade for this film is an 8. Eli Roth faced a dilemma when making Hostel Part II: we were in on it already. What made the first film work was how … Continue reading
The original Ocean’s 11 featured a bunch of entertainers trying to be actors. The new Ocean’s series has featured a bunch of actors trying to be entertainers, and it took them until the third one to get it right. Ocean’s 13 isn’t worried about the heist or the story, it’s interested in taking these actors … Continue reading
If there is any justice on this whirling glob of dirt and water, there will be a major rediscovery of Daryl Dukes’s Payday, in which world-class hellraiser Rip Torn gives the performance of his career as country-and-western warbler Maury Dann. Currently unavailable on DVD, and written by a now deceased novelist, Don Carpenter, whose entire … Continue reading