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.

Pretty in Pink Movie Review

There’s a real timelessness in John Hughes’ films that center on teenagers that belies the sometimes terribly dated fashions and soundtracks that accompany his stories. The opening montage of Pretty in Pink (written by Hughes, but directed by Howard Deutch) screams 80’s. The blaring saxophone of The Psychedelic Furs’ title song screeches over a scene of Andie (Molly Ringwald) getting ready for school in the morning. She crafts her own clothes, which look a lot like a blend of New Wave and post-punk. Later there’s James Spader as the wealthy yuppie Steff with his linen trousers and blazer, collared shirt unbuttoned halfway down, and his flowing blonde locks. Andie’s childhood friend Duckie Dale (Jon Cryer), who is not so secretly crazy for her, is a pure original fashion statement, but distinctly dated to the period.

sex, lies, and videotape Movie Review

Though this was the second time I’ve seen sex, lies, and videotape, it really felt like the first. The first time I saw it (probably in college or maybe even high school) I thought it was a little dull and unmemorable. I didn’t get what all the fuss was about. Sundance Audience Award winner? Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or winner? But then priorities and taste change and suddenly a character-driven drama filmed on a low budget about a man (Peter Gallagher) cheating on his wife (Andie MacDowell) with her sister (Laura San Giacomo) and the old friend (James Spader) who comes to visit and, with his eccentric personality, serves as a catalyst for change is a lot more interesting. Maybe when I was a teenager I was hoping for a lot more out of the sex part of the title. There’s plenty of sex talk, but not a lot of flesh. Like I said, priorities change.

Lincoln Movie Review

2300 years ago Euclid proclaimed as one of his common notions that things equal to the same thing are also equal to each other. This is a founding principle of geometry and necessary for the beginnings of modern engineering. It seems self-evident, doesn’t it? Of course Thomas Jefferson held it self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights such as liberty, yet he was himself a slave owner. In Steven Spielberg’s masterful biopic Lincoln, the 16^th President and drafter of the Emancipation Proclamation tries to rely on Euclid’s notion to help him in his decisions regarding slavery that will impact the United States and the terrible Civil War that was entering its fifth bloody year.

Wall Street Movie Review: A First Look at an 80s Icon

“Greed is good.” So says Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) in Wall Street, in one of the most famous 80s cinematic speeches when he attempts to save his position as an investor trying to leverage more profit out of Teldar Paper. The line is oft quoted, oft cited as one of the greatest or most memorable lines in movie history, but most significantly it’s held aloft as the prime example of what was wrong with corporate America in the 1980s. And Gekko is viewed as the epitome, the representative on the screen of the worst elements of capitalism.