A long-planned, crushingly filmed prequel to Alien, with director Ridley Scott again insulting his high achievement in Blade Runner. Many borrowed themes get rummaged together with absurd effects, dismal violence, and self-administered surgery by a scientist (Noomi Rapace) that seems both for and against abortion (in this ugly, loopy vision, …
Less a film than an attractively illustrated chronicle of sexual pathology. Brandon (Michael Fassbender) needs sex and lots of it — with whores, with pickups, with his hand. Pretty much anything, really, as long as the encounter is impersonal. The pathology does not tolerate humanity. But humanity arrives in the …
There are, to date, 11 crime novels from Norwegian author Jo Nesbø featuring detective Harry Hole, novels which have sold many millions of copies worldwide. So that takes a little bit of the mystery out of how this overstuffed, undercooked thriller landed talented director Tomas Alfredson (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy), …
Having treated the man who put life online — Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg — screenwriter Aaron Sorkin now turns his attention to the man who put it into the machine. (Not for nothing is the Apple co-founder so desperate to have the Mac say "Hello" at its unveiling.) Once again, …
In a bit of pre-emptive metacriticism, this third entry in the “early X-Men” series that began with First Class and hit its stride with Days of Future Past sends its young, ‘80s-era mutants to the mall to see Return of the Jedi, whereupon one of them declares that third entries …
After an opening that feels like a chunky blend of The Matrix, Terminator 2, and even Thor (hello, Destroyer!), Bryan Singer's return to the world of "Mutants are people too, only better" settles into a '70s-style actor's showcase. To wit: Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, musclebound and muted; James McAvoy's Charles Xavier, …