MOVIE REVIEW
RoboCop (2014)
Columbia Pictures and MGM Pictures
There are several films wrapped up in "RoboCop," of which the new one starring Joel Kinnaman as the luckless Alex Murphy and Abbie Cornish as his traumatized wife is competent, slick and knows that some topicality will condense automatically in a movie with Samuel L. Jackson as a ranting conservative talk-show host. The immediate problem is the heavy fan-service nods made to another film, Paul Verhoeven's 1987 original, which tend to land with a clang. If the new model is going to invoke its predecessor as knowingly as that, it can't complain if some comparisons are made about the level of ambition. The Reaganite military-industrial complex with its heartless wonks was only one target of the original film, a curate's cornucopia that also scooped up the Vietnam mind-set, blue-collar nobility, the role of women, contempt for intelligence and religious symbolism. José Padilha's version puts all its chips on one number instead, correctly spotting that contracted-out drone warfare is a moral minefield, but down-shifting the end result from gallows pulp to a high-concept sci-fi actioneer about a dead-shot cyborg and the woman who loves him. American Jesus has been swapped out for American Gladiator.
Continue reading “To Protect and Preserve” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Ron Phillips/Warner Brothers Pictures
Although “The Dark Knight Rises" is chock-full of revelations and twists, this review doesn't reveal anything but the odd spoiler contained — so proceed at your peril.
Full disclosure: This reviewer is not much of a fan of superhero or comic-book films. In fact, I haven’t even seen “Marvel’s The Avengers” or “The Amazing Spider-Man,” which for some may disqualify me from being able to write about their rival in the 2012 summer blockbuster stakes, “The Dark Knight Rises.” Luckily, Batman is the least superhuman of all the comic-book heroes, blessed — as he is — with a distinct lack of superpowers. And Christopher Nolan hasn’t seemed particularly interested in making traditional comic book films in his helming of the franchise so far. As such, I really loved “The Dark Knight” and still believe it to be up there with the best American films (Hollywood or otherwise) of the last 30 years. But that was essentially a crime film, if a slightly fantastical one.
The first thing to say is that “The Dark Knight Rises” is a very different from its predecessor. If “Batman Begins” was a dark, psychological martial arts film and “The Dark Knight” was demented tech-noir, “The Dark Knight Rises” is in many ways situated in much more recognizable action/spectacular territory. It contains underground lairs, bombs with ticking countdown timers and a frenetic, bombastic finale which ends with everyone looking to the skies in broad daylight, rather than the grimy, dank back alleys that Batman (Christian Bale) slinked down at the end of “The Dark Knight." In this film, the story is opened out to the world outside Gotham in a way that seems uncharacteristic: We even see the U.S. president talking about Gotham on television at one point, like it’s some kind of late-’90s asteroid-collision movie.
There’s little point in recounting the plot because it’s been public knowledge for the year or so since the first of many trailers was released. What’s so enticing about that “twilight’s last gleaming” trailer in particular was Selina Kyle’s (Anne Hathaway) whispered warning to Bruce Wayne about the oncoming reckoning from arch-villain Bane (Tom Hardy), and her asking how he “could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.” In that line is the suggestion that Bane might in some way be a warped hero for our time. In the years since the last installment, we in the real world have endured the bulk of the financial crash and a collapse in belief in many of our most respected societal institutions. Might billionaire Bruce Wayne be cast as the semi-villain of the piece and have to undergo a redemption and reincarnation of sorts to emerge as a recalibrated hero for our time?
Continue reading “Bat Out of Hell” »
Jack English/Studiocanal
Borrowing a page from Darren Aronofsky's book, Tomas Alfredson takes steps to ensure that the new version of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" swims with visible grain. It's a fine piece of calculated shorthand and works wonders for the ambiance. Every time Gary Oldman as George Smiley speaks from the shadows, the audience peers at him through a fog of silver halide chemistry. When Sir Alec Guinness walked this way, he also frowned through the grain but had a cast-iron excuse: It was 1979, and film grain came naturally.
Continue reading “From Chelsea With Love” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011)
Jack English/Studiocanal
Some movies generate high expectations — often through overblown marketing, sometimes by virtue of the elements that have come together to create the two hours of entertainment you have coughed up your hard-earned dollars to see. "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" has ingredients that would leave even the most jaded of cinemagoers salivating: a director (Tomas Alfredson) who has already proved himself the master of understatement and the purveyor of claustrophobia-inducing tension with "Let the Right One In"; a glittering cast of British talent — Gary Oldman, John Hurt, Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch et al — gathered in such numbers that you would be forgiven for thinking you were at an awards ceremony already; source material of almost legendary status written by one of the greatest thriller authors of our times.
Continue reading “Secret Lip Service” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2 (2011)
Warner Brothers Pictures
The end of the “Harry Potter” saga is more than the culmination of a decade-spanning big-screen standard. For the legions of fans that have devoured J. K. Rowling’s books and their movie adaptations, most of whom are now well into their college years and beyond, this is in many ways a coda to childhood itself.
So it’s no great surprise the crowds have turned out in droves and a record-breaking opening weekend is expected. The auditoriums showing “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2” after all are serving witness to what is essentially the world’s largest wake, a final chance to toast Harry, Ron, Hermione, Voldemort, Muggles, Hogwarts, Dumbledore, Snape and the other familiars before they go gently into the proverbial good night.
Continue reading “When Harry Met His Fate . . .” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Red Riding Hood (2011)
Kimberly French/Warner Bros. Pictures
Movies are often sold to studios on the promise of combining flick A and flick B to produce, well, flick A-plus-B or something. For example, “ ‘Dumb & Deader’ will totally be similar to ‘Dumb & Dumber’-meets-‘Sudden Death’.” It’s the age-old explanation for why Hollywood plagiarizes itself with such fervor.
In formulating “Red Riding Hood,” her ridiculous teenybopper-geared retooling of the fairy tale, director Catherine Hardwicke (“Twilight”) clearly couldn’t be bothered to restrict the formula to two movies, or TV shows, or popular trends. Instead, the medieval village-set picture is “Gossip Girl”-meets-“Spring Awakening”-and-a-Renaissance Faire with a dash of “Twilight,” a sprinkling of MTV, a touch of Baz Luhrmann-style anachronisms and all the sweeping helicopter shots you’ll ever need.
Continue reading “Can’t Fight the Twilight” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Book of Eli (2010)
David Lee/Warner Bros. Pictures
“The Book of Eli” takes place in a bleak, barren wasteland, with society’s detritus strewn about and the few remaining humans caked in dirt and grime. Set some 30 years after what’s called “the flash,” it occupies a standard post-apocalyptic milieu. Yet, at times the Hughes brothers — the filmmaking talents behind “Menace II Society” and “From Hell,” among others — dress it differently. They incorporate cinematography that emphasizes passing clouds and stark shadows, in a noir/graphic-novel approach; and they benefit from the charismatic presence of Denzel Washington as the loner title character.
Yet despite their best stylistic efforts — which include the incorporation of windswept Western gun fights and other such genre tropes — the movie entwines itself in a pedestrian chase-oriented narrative that drags along before descending into irredeemably inexplicable silliness.
Continue reading “The Road Less Raveled” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Disney’s A Christmas Carol (2009)
ImageMovers Digital
If there’s one definitive conclusion to be drawn from “Disney’s A Christmas Carol,” it’s this: Motion-capture animation, as practiced by Robert Zemeckis, doesn’t work. This is the third film in the director’s continuing experiment with the technology and — five years after “The Polar Express” — he and his team still haven’t figured out how to preserve the human qualities of the actors beneath the deadened mannequin demeanor forced upon them by the technology.
Continue reading “The Last of All, Hopefully” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Unborn (2009)
Peter Iovino/Rogue Pictures
Give David S. Goyer some credit: At least the writer-director of “The Unborn” shows some awareness of horror’s cultural legacy beyond “Saw” and “Hostel.” He’s made a film about a dybbuk, which is (as described by Wikipedia) “a malicious possessing spirit, believed to be the dislocated soul of a dead person,” that serves as a primary figure in Eastern European Jewish folklore.
Unfortunately, the movie emergent from that initial conceit owes less to the tradition it evokes then the bland, sanitized aesthetic so familiar to PG-13 Hollywood horror. It’s full of cheap thrills that mostly consist of people popping up out of nowhere and dialogue comprised largely of theological gobbledygook. Sadly, none of it even qualifies as so bad it’s hilarious, save for the image of Gary Oldman as a rabbi, loudly incanting an exorcism in Hebrew.
Continue reading “Where Is Father Marin When You Need Him?” »
Warner Bros. Entertainment
Critics have written many words about "The Dark Knight" since its release, and it might seem unnecessary to contribute more at this stage. But there is one aspect of the film that has been noticeably under-hyped. Christopher Nolan hasn’t gotten enough credit for the way he’s successfully managed to integrate Imax technology into the mainstream cinematic format.
Having seen "The Dark Knight" in both an Imax and a regular 35mm projection, I can attest that it is an excellent film in whichever presentation it’s viewed in. Its undeniable quality signals a coming-of-age for the comic-book genre, and the film demonstrates Hollywood moviemaking at the top of its game.
Continue reading “Holy Imax, Batman!” »
