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Warning: Longwinded Star Trek Into Darkness Spoilers and Geekery Ahead!
(Seriously – this is a really long, rambling, geek-wonky piece about why I’m disappointed in Star Trek Into Darkness. It’s really probably only of interest to hard-core Trek fans who’ve seen Into Darkness and are thus spoiler-proof. And even they might get bored with it all.) In my previous piece about why I felt a [...]
The Shiny, Sexy Seduction of Star Trek Into Darkness
“What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he’s around?… Nobody is going to be taken in by a guy with a long, red, pointy tail! What’s he gonna sound like?… “He will just bit by little bit lower our standards where they are important. Just a tiny little bit. Just [...]
And the Beat Goes On: Baz Luhrmann’s Spastic, Love-sick Gatsby
It’s possible to both love the giddy, flamboyant excesses and musical abandon of Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 fever-dream Moulin Rouge and appreciate the rich prose and all-American soul-searching of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby and still come away from Luhrmann’s new film version of the literary classic feeling that just because someone can do [...]
Iron Man Three: Kiss Kiss Clang Clang
I’d guess most everyone who helped give Iron Man Three the number two box-office opening of all time (after its stable mate The Avengers last year) came away from it feeling suitably entertained by the First Summer Film of the Year. But so much of that feeling, including the public’s attendance and “A” CinemaScore, can’t help [...]
Pain & Gain: No.
After three (going on four) Transformers movies for “kids,” we’re back to being buffeted and beaten down by director Michael Bay’s R-rated adolescent id (last seen popping up its leering, lurid, head in 2003’s repugnant Bad Boys II). Bay’s Pain & Gain tells (as we’re repeatedly reminded by “ironic” title cards) the true story of [...]
Oblivion: Of Cruise and Nothingness
Ah, the tyranny of “cool ideas.” Any young, imaginative genre fan (be it of sci-fi, Westerns, crime, or romance) no doubt had school notebooks festooned with doodles and descriptions of ideas birthed along the lines of, “Wouldn’t it be really, wicked-awesome, cool, gnarly if…,” followed by descriptions and drawings of Ligers and their ilk. Written [...]
Spring Breakers Forever
Like many, at first I dismissed Harmony Korine’s 1995 screenplay for Larry Clark’s Kids and his 1997 directorial debut Gummo (as well as the follow ups Julian Donkey Boy and Trash Humpers) as sordid shock mongering; his fascination with the degenerate behavior of the bungled and the botched coming off as risible hipster sneering. But as [...]
Interview: The Place Beyond the Pines Writer-director Derek Cianfrance
In 2011, writer-director Derek Cianfrance’s feature-film debut Blue Valentine, about a marriage in collapse, grabbed the attention of film lovers who appreciate powerful, perhaps even brutal emotional honesty. For his follow up, Cianfrance has reteamed with his Valentine star Ryan Gosling, plus Bradley Cooper, Ray Liotta, Eva Mendes, and go-to character actor Ben Mendelsohn, to [...]
Interview: Gimme the Loot Writer-director Adam Leon
Despite a title cribbed from Notorious B.I.G., writer-director Adam Leon’s first feature, Gimme the Loot, isn’t some dark, violent dive into the criminal underworld. Instead, the sure-footed film is a much lighter, but still honest urban adventure that follows two New York City graffiti artists on the streets of the Bronx. Malcolm and Sofia (newcomers [...]
Oz the Great and Powerful: Mickey Mouse Owns Your Childhood
Disney’s Oz the Great and Powerful is neither an unwatchable, awful film, nor is it anything that anyone not dragged to the theater by coat-tugging children has any need to see. I’m not a hard-core fan of the original Victor Fleming/Judy Garland film (though I certainly don’t dislike or disparage it), and I’ve never read [...]
