Theo James as Four and Shailene Woodley as Beatrice Prior/Tris in Divergent. PHOTO COURTESY SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT Better than Twilight but not quite as good as The Hunger Games, Neil Burger’s Divergent is the latest foray into the arena of ’tween lit adaptations that’s seen far more wannabe franchises vanquished than successful launches. Film series based […]
film and movie reviews
Posted inArts & Culture
A rousing Rise of an Empire
Eva Green as Artemisia in 300: Rise of an Empire. PHOTO COURTESY Warner Bros. Pictures I was one of the few who wasn’t completely taken in by Zack Snyder’s 300. While the aesthetic he employed – digital backgrounds, bleeding colors and darkly accented characters that suggested a comic book on acid – was gripping, the […]
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Grounded Speed outdistances Furious
Aaron Paul stars as Tobey Marshall in Need for Speed. PHOTO BY WALT DISNEY PICTURES Do we need another movie built around fast cars and reckless drivers? Or for that matter, one based on a video game? For me, the answer is a resounding “no” to both questions and that being the case, I went […]
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Non-Stop flaws
Liam Neeson stars as Bill Marks in Non-Stop. PHOTO BY UNIVERSAL PICTURES Liam Neeson continues to save the day in Jaume Collet-Serra’s Non-Stop, a claustrophobic thriller that, if nothing else, lives up to its title. Never before has a film been so stagnant in setting, yet brisk in the way it tells its tale. It […]
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Costner saves 3 Days to Kill
Kevin Costner in 3 Days to Kill. McG’s 3 Days to Kill is the sort of film that’s hard to defend. Yet, I couldn’t help but be entertained by its odd pastiche of elements and dark sense of humor, both of which helped add a sly twist on what otherwise would have been a pedestrian […]
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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 […]
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Spike Lee delivers twisted noir with Oldboy
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 […]
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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 […]
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The Book Thief nearly undone by trite approach
If good intentions translated into quality filmmaking Brian Percival’s The Book Thief would be among the greatest movies ever made. But alas, purpose of this sort does not translate into quality art and while the director may have his heart in the right place, the result is a stilted tale that becomes bogged down by […]
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Philomena engrossing
Judi Dench as Philomena Lee and Steve Coogan as Martin Sixsmith in Philomena. PHOTO COURTESY THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY When Philomena Lee became pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1951, she had very few options. Out of shame, her parents sent her to a convent in Roscrea where she worked as an indentured laundry lady, […]
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Frozen upholds strong Disney tradition
In 1989, after suffering an unusually long draught where successful animated features were concerned, Disney Studios released The Little Mermaid, a blockbuster musical cartoon based on a Hans Christian Anderson tale that righted the Mouse Factory’s floundering ship and marked the beginning of the modern resurgence of the animated feature film. With their latest, Frozen, […]
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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 […]
