As you may already know, I love animation, but even I have to admit that there are too many coming out right now — which can result is unworthy ones getting a shake, and worthy ones getting lost in the mix. Such is the case, I think, with Storks, whose uninspiring title and publicity campaign…
It seemed like a match made in movie heaven. Take a beloved series of magical, best-selling, books about weird ‘n’ wondrous kids and hand off the movie version to the master of the weird ‘n’ wonderful, Tim Burton. What could possibly wrong? Well, based on the evidence of the finished film, pretty much everything except…
Despite great casting, there is so much potential for this to go horribly, horribly wrong. Already trying to do a remake of not only a great classic western, but the original film upon which even THAT was based, The Seven Samurai, by the legendary director, Akira Kurasawa. It’s one thing to take a Japanese film…
The Girl On The Train is an effective, well-constructed and tightly wound adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ 2015 best-seller (which did not, contrary to the poster copy, “shock the world”, but which did give readers a juicy little post-Gone Girl misty mystery to read on, well, the train). Emily Blunt stars as an alcoholic divorcee who…
Welcome back to this week’s cavalcade of news stories form the world of film! We already start off with a doozy, so hold on tight! In this week’s “Most vexing remake” story, screenwriter Terence Winter has been hired to pen director Antoine Fuqua’s remake of Scarface. I know, that sentence gave me pause as well.…
Made by an Irish director with Irish funds based on an American Young Adult book series and set in the United States, this curious low-budget thriller, shot on 16mm, has a certain hand-sewn élan. Max Records (Where The Wild Things Are) plays a teenage loner – John Wayne Cleaver (!) – who, along with his shrink, thinks…
Joseph Gordan-Levitt atones for The Walk with his titular performance in Snowden, a film no-one else but Oliver Stone was going to make. I’m glad he did. It’s uneven, ramming brilliant scenes up against turgid ones, but ultimately it’s an overwhelmingly powerful experience. Like all Oliver Stone films, it gets you by the end. There are three distinct…
A busy week this time around, folks! (Yes, I used the word ‘folks’. Deal with it.) Friday is a packed day, so here’s your essential information a wee bit early. Wouldn’t want you to get impatient, right? Let’s go! In this week’s “At this rate, no problem!” story, Netflix would like to see 50 %…
British TV documentarian Louis Theroux is a very clever chap. He obviously realised that the Alex Gibney documentary Going Clear was going to be the Big Boy of Scientology feature docos for quite awhile. Hence the title My Scientology Movie, which is tongue in cheek, certainly, but also implies a different tack and a different take – both…
Ron Howard’s documentary unfortunately contains little that was not done better in the epic television documentary The Beatles Anthology (1995) and nothing that will be revelatory to Beatles fans of any level. What’s being touted is new footage, and there is that. I’d never seen, for example, footage from concerts in Manilla and Tokyo, and that stuff…