MOVIE REVIEW
World War Z (2013)
Jaap Buitendijk/Paramount Pictures
The movie adaptation of Max Brooks’s “World War Z” has lowered expectations time and again. For starters, Hollywood’s indisputably most overrated director, Marc Forster — fresh off ruining James Bond for everyone — was attached to the project. Extensive rewrites and reshoots then followed, resulting in a bloated budget and a yearlong delay. All indications were that it would turn out terrible, so it’s a relief that the film is even remotely watchable. This is not to say “World War Z” isn’t the embodiment of filmmaking-by-committee of the worst kind. In fact, it is pretty much the cinematic equivalent of a zombie: brain-dead, soulless and merely going through the epileptic motions.
Continue reading “Nighness of the Moviemaking Dead” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Iron Man 3 (2013)
Zade Rosenthal/Marvel
At some point in any hero's journey, the past will come back to haunt him or her, and so it is with Tony Stark a k a Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.). His past mistake is Aldrich Killian, a slithering Guy Pearce as an ambitious genetic engineer who wants to form a partnership with Stark. Of course Tony Stark snubs him, and the seeds are planted for revenge years later.
Into the picture steps a global uber-terrorist known only as the Mandarin, played with delicious delight by Sir Ben Kingsley, who is clearly enjoying himself in the role. Stark's world is quite literally torn apart, and he begins his road to redemption and his own revenge.
Continue reading “Overruled With an Iron Fist” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Shame (2011)
MK2
British artist Steve McQueen has garnered much attention in the film world, and one has to wonder whether his meteoric rise to fame has more to do with ignorant moviegoers finding his name vaguely familiar and ergo deserving attention. Because to be frank, what critics initially interpreted as abstractionist about “Hunger” now seems like inarticulacy in retrospect.
Continue reading “Par for the Intercourse” »