Well, our march through the cinematic wasteland of January and February continues, with nervous studios trotting out potentially bad films to be torn to shreds in the court of public opinion. Movies that perform well in the post-Christmas slump tend to be the exception, rather than the rule, with the summer blockbuster season still a haze in the distance....
If I had a time machine, I would go back in time and destroy the script for “Inception” — not because I dislike the film, as I think Christopher Nolan is one of the best directors of modern cinema, and “Inception” was great. However, the film started the terrible trend of filmmakers using the “bwah” sound effect in almost...
What seems to be a modern interpretation of mafia-crime movies, “A Most Violent Year” enters the scene away from its proposed goal of depicting the year 1981 as a crime-filled drama, but stumbles into an interesting take on what it means to achieve the typical American dream. Directed and written by J.C. Chandor, the movie opens to New York...
“Whodunit” films have a unique air about them. These types of films are both fun and challenging. They allow the audience to become a character within the story. Viewers participate as they try and solve the mystery for themselves. From the beginning of the movie until its end, the goal for the audience is to find the perpetrator. The...
Remember when Johnny Depp used to be cool? I do, back in the magical time known as the late ‘90s that we all view with the rose-tinted lenses of nostalgia. I remember, living in my mom’s small apartment in downtown Portland, surreptitiously watching “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” on VHS and thinking, “man, this Depp guy is pretty...
It was somewhere between the dream sequence about losing touch with your inner child and the “hilarious” scene involving the protagonists’ clumsy first-time attempt to use cellophane tape that I realized that “Paddington” wasn’t for me. Mind you, this has much more to do with me and much less to do with the film itself. It has a well-rounded...
Director Michael Mann’s latest movie has come out, with promises that the former hand behind “Heat” would be able to spice up Hollywood with a new crime thriller (I tried very hard to avoid a pun using the word heat). With such a pedigree, I took my seat in the theater already shaking with excitement over the idea of...
Known for opening discussion on masculinity from his Westerns to war films, Clint Eastwood continues this discussion in his recent film “American Sniper,” a biopic focused on Chris Kyle or “the most lethal sniper in U.S. military history” — as both Kyle’s autobiography and the Pentagon claim. Played by Bradley Cooper, “American Sniper” follows Kyle’s military career, from his...
For those worried about Ebola or military action by ISIS, I have good news. The actual threat to American lives is Irish actor Liam Neeson, who rampages his way through Los Angeles in “Taken 3,” a film that must have been made as the result of a bet to see if director Olivier Megaton could make the worst film...
It’s a simple story.
Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) is visited by ex-girlfriend Shasta (Katherine Waterston), who is being coerced by her real estate mogul lover Mickey Wolfman’s (Eric Roberts) wife (Serena Scott Thomas) and her “spiritual coach” to commit her husband to an insane asylum and get his money, and wants him to help her stop them. A member of...