While directors M. Night Shyamalan (Remember him? The Sixth Sense ring a bell?) and Spike Lee have both had to abandon their independent ways and have essentially become filmmakers for hire, at the very least you can say that the latter has managed to inject a bit of his unique style into the studio projects […]
action movies
Bale and Harrelson formidable duo in Furnace
Woody Harrelson as Curtis DeGroat and Christian Bale as Russell Baze in Out of the Furnace. PHOTO CREDIT BY KERRY HAYES. While writing his follow-up to 2009’s Crazy Heart, director Scott Cooper had Christian Bale in mind for the lead role in what was to become Out of the Furnace. He even went so far […]
Homefront runs on autopilot
It’s never good when your mind starts wandering while watching a movie. To be sure, it is the rare film that keeps you in rapt attention from start to finish, but when you begin thinking about how much money each of the actors got in order to throw good judgment out the door or what […]
McConaughey, Leto shine
Jared Leto as Rayon and Matthew McConaughey as Ron Woodroof in Dallas Buyers Club PHOTO COURTESY FOCUS FEATURES Very little was known about HIV or AIDS in 1985 when Ron Woodroof was diagnosed as having contracted the virus. Research was underway in order to find out how the spread of this scourge could be arrested […]
Stars shine in Enough Said
James Gandolfini as Albert and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Eva in Enough Said. PHOTOS COURTESY FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES’ There’s an air of melancholy that hangs over Nicole Holofcener’s Enough Said. Obviously, some of this is due to the untimely passing of James Gandolfini, who delivers one of his most informed performances, pointing toward what could have […]
Reunion at the core of Monsters University
With Cars 2 and Brave, Pixar Studios showed that they too could deliver mediocre animated films much like their competition. The problem with those two films was that they lacked the heart and pathos that made nearly all of the company’s previous efforts so distinctive. Some have claimed that increased input by the corporate bigwigs […]
Down acceptable
Check your brain at the door and be prepared to file Roland Emmerich’s White House Down firmly in the “guilty pleasure” file. The latest from the master of disaster is a gloriously realized piece of popcorn entertainment that revels – and at times wallows in – the ridiculousness of its premise. Sure, we’ve seen the […]
