Not just was Christopher Columbus: The Discovery faster into the marketplace (for the quincentenary of the voyage of the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria); it was also clearer in story, in character, in actors' diction, in photography. Bad as it was, sometimes amusingly so, this is worse -- …
Ridley Scott finishes what he started in Prometheus: the story of David (Michael Fassbender), a sentient creation who discovers that his creator is laughably inferior, but still potentially useful. (There’s a bang-up opening scene featuring David’s awakening — physical and otherwise — for those who may have thought they were …
This creature-feature has, and is, a good time, but it works very hard and spends a lot of money in order to have it. The question is, is it worth it? This question comes up not only because this movie seems much too heavily endowed for the simple, 1950s-style monster …
This creature-feature has, and is, a good time, but it works very hard and spends a lot of money in order to have it. The question is, is it worth it? This question comes up not only because this movie seems much too heavily endowed for the simple, 1950s-style monster …
The most sensational celebrity kidnapping this side of Patty Hearst become this year’s most controversial movie. J. Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer) was the richest man that ever lived. What shocked the world more than the actual kidnapping and subsequent unharboring of his grandson’s (Charlie Plummer) ear was gramp’s famously unfavorable …
Formula underworld drama poured into an epic template. Like Jiffy-brand waffle batter spread over an iron the size of a billiard table. "Based on a true story," it traces, in separate intertwined storylines, the converging upward paths of criminal and cop: the former (Denzel Washington) starting out as the servile …
Faithful re-enactment of a 1993 incident in Somalia: the eighteen-hour urban firefight that ensues when an intended neat, clean, in-and-out raid into the heart of Mogadishu (colloquially called "the Mogue," or just "Mogue") goes bad. It delivers a mixed experience, even, you might say, a mixed message: harrowing yet spectacular …
In the tradition of The Yakuza, The Challenge, House of Bamboo, Rififi in Tokyo; namely the tradition of Western tough guy in the Land of the Rising Sun. Michael Douglas (who always looks as if he knows he's being photographed, possibly because he is under investigation by Internal Affairs, but …
Two of the more socially conscious of cinematic genres — science fiction and the detective story — have been mated to produce a future-generation Los Angeles (A.D. 2019) that looks like Tokyo or Hong Kong gone to seed. The detective work is somewhat scamped, except for a good scene (echoing …
Director Denis Villeneuve’s gorgeous, gargantuan sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 neon-noir about what happens when humanity creates its own superior. People are notoriously fragile, fickle things; if we go giving intelligence to something more durable and dependable, what do we have left to brag about? The answer, this time around: …
Two of the more socially conscious of cinematic genres — science fiction and the detective story — have been mated to produce a future-generation Los Angeles (A.D. 2019) that looks like Tokyo or Hong Kong gone to seed. The detective work is somewhat scamped, except for a good scene (echoing …
The war on terrorism, or anyway a single battle against terrorism, conducted with slickness and razzmatazz, and time for romance too. Leonardo DiCaprio continues to breathe hard in his efforts to be an action hero; the steel-haired Russell Crowe, in a desk job, plays peekaboo around his glasses frames; both …
A cuckold, too chicken to take revenge first-hand, kills himself in such a manner as to frame the lover for murder. (The ungrieving widow is no help: "Leave me out of this.") Black-ish, noir-ish crime comedy calls to mind the Coen brothers, or their Fargo at any rate, if only …
"I've seen it all, counselor," intones worldly-wise dealmaker Brad Pitt. "It's all shit." This is very close to the point of The Counselor. Pretty shit, pricey shit, exciting shit, lovable shit, even enduring shit - but still shit. The counterargument, to the extent that one is offered, is so brief …