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“Maybe any one of the other 50 entries in the Three Mesquiteers franchise are actually good, enjoyable B-movie westerns that manage to thrill within their limited scope, but New Frontier is not one of them. Even at barely under an hour it feels padded and stretched thin. There’s no nuance or textur” read more
“Can we all just admit that television-to-film adaptations typically don’t work, and that they emerge as bloated episodes on the big screen? Or that they emerge with a distinct feeling of three or more episodes strung together? Well, prepare to be amazed as In the Loop functions on its own merits a” read more
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
“Well, this one is at least better than the prior entry in this never-ending franchise that has grown stale and cemented into a series of character tropes and ideas recycled from one chapter to the next. There’s nothing new added to the expanded mythology here besides the presence of young, dewy lo” read more
“Ah, The Invasion a movie compromised by committee interference and the last minute decision to bring in not only the Wachowskis to rewrite the script but James McTeigue to handle the reshoots. This leaves The Invasion as a film in search of an identity. Well, that and a core idea, any idea will do a” read more
“Sometimes Clint Eastwood’s penchant for fast, loose, and cheap directing projects ends up working in the film’s favor, and other times it sinks the production because the sutures bleed throughout. American Sniper’s quickie nature was evident, look no further than that laughable fake baby, and ” read more
“Not a direct remake of the sweaty, paranoid original by John Frankenheimer, but another adaptation of the source material, this version of The Manchurian Candidate still can’t seem to emerge from the omnipresent shadow of the 1962 film. Not entirely fair as this version makes numerous changes (som” read more
“What exactly is Barton Fink about, really? What do all of these vague symbols and political allusions add up to, and does the deeper “truth” to them really matter? Barton Fink seems in deeply enamored with its own ambiguities, both in narrative architecture and thematically. It’s about t” read more
“If Kagemusha isn’t as daring as Akira Kurosawa’s other samurai epics, like Seven Samurai or Throne of Blood, then it is still a pleasurable jewel of a late master throwing around his considerable artistry and craft. The troubled birth and production doesn’t show (much), and it is an immensely ” read more
“Call me crazy, but I almost miss the cotton candy fluff of other Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals if the alternative is Carousel which presents domestic abuse in the most questionable way imaginable. After all, the lousy main character gets semi-redeemed while his widow and orphaned child spout out ” read more
The 25 Best Films of the 21st Century So Far (25 movies items)
“The pastiche exterior and S&M teasing are the enticing bits, the coy titillations to peak your interest and rope you in. Then there’s the bait-and-switch as the power struggle reveals numerous complications and eventually settles into a quieter examination of the sacrifices and struggles invol” read more
“We begin at the end with Bryan Ferry’s transformation into remote, sphinxlike pop icon complete and work backwards through the droll lounge lizard and end with the cracked out, cynical romantic. The Best of Roxy Music admirably stitches together the two disparate phases of their career with more e” read more
“It’s not that the reconvened Roxy Music is bad, it’s just that they sound so generic and tired in comparison to the glorious cracked art-school rejects they were just a few short years prior. While Country Life and Siren were clearly pointing the direction towards a more coherent pop sound they ” read more
“There was a four year gap between their last album, Siren, and this reunion effort, one that suspiciously sounds closer to a Bryan Ferry solo than a Roxy Music project. Siren was a coherent and enthralling merger of their pop aspirations and their art-rock freak-outs. “Love is the Drug” was enou” read more
“A star vehicle in the worst sense in that nothing else matters but the central performance, not the litany of narrative pileups nor the incoherent tone or the shaking supporting characters. Nothing else matters but Robert Duvall chewing the scenery as an ornery old bastard. A Night in Old Mexico is ” read more
“It may sound heartless to knock a film about a man dying of cancer asking his family to respect his wishes to die, but Lullaby treats every single scene and character interaction as an excuse for volatile explosions and never modulates. There’s also the problem of the film taking symbolic gestures” read more
“Here is a film that I admired more than I enjoyed or embraced. It clearly wears its influences too loudly with Brazil looming largely over every single frame. The Double suffers in the unintentional comparison, but it borrows the oppressive production design from that film while forsaking the human ” read more