Like Sin City, this takes its material from a "graphic novel" by Frank Miller, and in turn it takes from the film treatment of that one — or to be more precise, director Zack Snyder takes from director Robert Rodriguez — the same, or similar, unnatural light, "virtual" backgrounds, coarse-grained …
Laboriously contrived rom-com action thriller, laboriously directed by Andy Tennant, wherein a pair of hostile exes, he a skip-tracer and she a bail-jumper, re-bond while solving a murder and dodging a hit man en route to the hoosegow. Not a good showcase for the assets of Jennifer Aniston, apart from …
First-time director and cinematographer (rare combination) Shona Auerbach builds a façade of realism over an interior of mush. The title figure (Jack McElhone) is a nine-year-old deaf boy who never speaks, yet narrates the action (in an all but unintelligible Scots accent) in the form of letters to his absent …
Gerard Butler may have found the perfect late-middle age role in director and co-writer Christian Gudegast’s quasi-stylish, both-sides-of-the-law crime drama. He tears into his performance as nasty cop (well, sheriff) and lousy husband Nick Flanagan the way Flanagan tears into a crime-scene donut, and crams the screen with a combination …
Resurrection again! Writer-director Patrick Lussier, under the imprimatur of Wes Craven, has some genuine ideas to fiddle with. Dracula, pronounced "Dra-COOL-ya" by one who should know, does not register on camera any more than in a mirror. And his invisibility in mirrors, speaking of which, is used against him in …
With the world poised to suffer the fate of immolation by the red-hot remnants of an errant comet, the government earmarks a select group of civilians, based on their occupations, to evacuate their families to Greenland and begin rebuilding the wreckage. Among the chosen: John Garrity (Gerard Butler), a structural …
Computer-animated, seemingly computer-written, Viking tale, revolving around a twiggy little lad named Hiccup, “different” from his stout fellows, odd, aberrant, queer you might say, who rather than slay dragons, gets to know them, understands them, negotiates for peace between the species, yet still proves his mettle as a “real” Viking …
Gerard Butler and Gary Oldman go underwater in this submarine fueled action thriller about the kidnapping and subsequent rescue the Russian president. Donovan Marsh directs.
The video-game adventuress, back in action. Here she is, punching a computer-generated shark on the snout and hitching a ride on its dorsal fin; and here, sliding in slow-motion down the face of a cliff on a rope, upside down, while picking off would-be assassins all around her with her …
Disgust with the justice system drives a "brain," a diabolical omnipotent technological wizard, to punish the people who insufficiently punished the people who raped and murdered his wife and daughter. The humble flatfoot hits the nail on the head: "Un-fucking-believable." With Jamie Foxx, Gerard Butler, Bruce McGill, Colm Meaney, Leslie …
Somewhere along the line, it may occur to you that Babak Najafi’s sequel to 2013’s president-in-peril pic Olympus Has Fallen is a sly attack on America masquerading as a celebration of same. It’s more than the one-man-army absurdity of aging security chief Gerard Butler as he winningly fights the war …
Gerard Butler plays the life-based Sam Childers, an ex-con hellraiser who catches some gospel piety from his wife (Michelle Monaghan). He hauls the family to Sudan, where children are being brutalized (or doing the brutalization), and in the name of God he puts his violent skills to work as a …
When a reclusive marine biologist is lost at sea off his own private island, his motherless little girl (having picked up none of his Scots accent even though he’s the only person in her life) turns for help to the Indiana Jones-y fictional hero of a series of adventure novels. …
“Why can’t you simply put your critical faculties on hold long enough to sit back and enjoy the damn movie?” The question comes up — particularly in the summer months — more times than I care to remember. Olympus Has Fallen is the answer to discerning action fan’s prayers: an …