Ghostbusters Movie Review

In this era of reboots, sequels, re-imaginings, and reinventions, one thing has consistently escaped the Hollywood executives who greenlight this stuff. They continue to make blockbuster cinema a boys club, catering to and casting men in most major action and comedy films. But leave it to Paul Feig, the director of the hysterically funny female response to the male gross-out comedy – Bridesmaids – to bring us the female Ghostbusters. A second sequel in the franchise was part of Hollywood lore for years with talk of Chris Farley being involved shortly before his death in 1997. But now we finally, at long last, even though almost no one was demanding it, have a new Ghostbusters with the all-lady cast of Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones, and Kate McKinnon.

Blackhat Movie Review

I have found myself over the years consistently enthralled by Michael Mann’s movies. He creates stories of men entirely dedicated to their professions, seemingly without limits. Al Pacino and Robert De Niro faced off as detective and thief, two men who would stop at nothing (including the loss of a relationship) in completing the mission in Heat. Daniel Day-Lewis was a frontiersman trying to save the woman he loved in The Last of the Mohicans. Tom Cruise was a fiercely professional hitman toying with Jamie Foxx’s cab driver in Collateral. And Foxx and Colin Farrell lived the lives of undercover narcotics detectives in Miami Vice. Mann sets these stories amid the allure of gorgeous cinematography, often making well-known cities look like brand new tailored playgrounds for men with fast cars and guns, whether it’s L.A., Miami, or Hong Kong in his latest, Blackhat.

Avengers: Age of Ultron Movie Review

Does it really matter what anyone thinks of a movie like Avengers: Age of Ultron? These kinds of movies don’t live and die by either critical or popular opinion. They are guaranteed to rake in huge revenue not only at the box office, but through merchandising tie-ins. The hype and excitement, the feeling of its being a cultural event THE movie you must see this summer (or early spring as it opened in early May) ensure that hordes of people will go to see it. And those multitudes have been programmed from decades of action-packed, effects-laden event movies to believe that all they have to do is stimulate the physical senses. As long as lots of stuff blows up, implodes, collapses, cracks, breaks, splinters, and crunches accompanied, of course, by appropriately deafening sound effects, then the movie has accomplished its primary goal.

Short Cut Movie Review: Rush

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

It’s a result of severely reduced expectations that Ron Howard’s Rush managed to earn more than a little critical praise last year. As an example of its kind – the race car movie – it’s better than you might expect, but as an example of its kind more broadly – the sports movie – it’s sorely lacking in inspiration and spiritual uplift. The greatest sports movies draw their spectators in and make them stand squarely behind the hero so firmly and with such emotional investment that you can’t help but be overcome with emotion. I think of examples like Rocky or Breaking Away. Alternatively, they set up a tragic figure and become more a study of character and loss like in Raging Bull or Million Dollar Baby. Of the two protagonists in Rush – James hunt, the lothario playboy played by Chris Hemsworth, and Niki Lauda, the cautious and meticulous champion played by Daniel Brühl – neither one achieves either of those apotheoses necessary for greatness of character.

Short Cut Review: Snow White and the Huntsman

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

The wooden acting of the two eponymous leads, Kristen Stewart and Chris Hemsworth, sink this updated version of the classic fairy tale almost as quickly as the decision to turn it into an action and special effects spectacle. Several narrative inconsistencies don't exactly help either. However, the special effects are truly amazing, involving some of the most detailed and effective use of CGI in recent years. Probably the best part of the entire movie is the extraordinary cast used (with the aid of mind-blowing effects) to play the dwarfs: Bob Hoskins; Ray Winstone; Toby Jones; Ian McShane; Eddie Marsan; and Nick Frost among them.

Thor Movie Review

The Marvel Comics movie Thor is more than just a commercial for The Avengers, it’s also a movie where characters behave in ways that are necessitated by the plot and some adherence to the comic lore. It’s a movie that spent so much time and energy creating two different planets (one inspired by Flash Gordon and the other by The Lord of the Rings) that they forget to apply some production design to a New Mexico town that abruptly ends at the end of Main St. That Kenneth Branagh stooped to direct this mess does not speak highly of Kenneth Branagh. Has he become the latest in a series of unique directorial talents to become a slave to a large paycheck? How does a man whose screen representations of Shakespeare are rivaled only by Olivier come to work with such hackneyed writing and wooden acting?

The Avengers Movie Review

A funny thing started happening in my mind a few days after seeing The Avengers – I actually began feeling like I wanted to see it again. This after coming out of it with the usual lackluster feelings I have after another superhero movie. The bar has been set so low for our expectations when it comes to the latest incarnation of some colorful but troubled person with special powers that we think of films as uninteresting as Spider Man 2 and Iron Man as great works of art. I enjoyed those films almost as much as anyone I suppose and I agree they are among the best the genre has to offer, but as far as I can tell the only thing that sets them apart from junk like The Fantastic Four is a slightly better screenplay and at least an attempt at something deeper and richer beyond blowing stuff up real big and loud.

The Cabin in the Woods Movie Review

Joss Whedon has built a strong cult following around his projects that have a tendency to subvert genre conventions and put a new spin on familiar stories. His short-lived TV series “Firefly” and the follow-up film Serenity was a sci-fi space western. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which most people forget was a movie before it was a popular TV show starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, took the dumb blonde caricature who is always the first to die in horror films and made her the hero, an ass-kicking, smart-talking, wooden stake-wielding defender of humanity. As co-writer along with Drew Goddard, who directs, and producer of The Cabin in the Woods, Whedon turns his attention to the slasher/horror/torture porn set of genres and sub-genres.