Big Top Pee-wee Directed by Randal Kleiser Written by Paul Reubens and George McGrath USA, 1988 Following the success of the Tim Burton-helmed Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and the beloved children’s show Pee-wee’s Playhouse, Big Top Pee-wee is an uneven entry in the ongoing comedic career of Paul Reubens. Pee-wee Herman, the man-child with a heart of …
Québec born director Denis Villeneuve has come a long way since breaking onto the scene with 2000’s Maelström, the film that truly put his talent on the map for all to admire.
A sequel for a film that hasn’t even been released? And one that is an early Oscar darling? Pinch me this isn’t real. But it looks like it is, or at least according to Variety, who reports Lionsgate is developing a sequel to Sicario, which is set to open in theaters this week. The sequel …
10. Waterworld Directed by: Kevin Reynolds It could be the flop of all flops. At the time, “Waterworld” was the most expensive film ever made. Starring Kevin Costner, “Waterworld” is a science-fiction/fantasy film taking place roughly 500 years after the polar ice caps melted in the beginning of the 21st century, effectively covering the entire …
While everyone is busy labeling Marco Polo as Netflix’s answer to Game of Thrones, HBO is looking for their own new project big enough and worthy enough of inspiring copycats, and they may have found it with a new series now in development from Executive Producers Martin Scorsese and Benicio Del Toro. Deadline reported Tuesday …
It’s not just that Paul Thomas Anderson’s movies tend to defy any one genre description; it’s that, often, it seems as if the writer-director is trying to play with many genres simultaneously. The only reason that Boogie Nights isn’t the best drama of the 1990s is that it spends a lot of time trying to be the best comedy of the 1990s instead. So Anderson’s newest, Inherent Vice, is a departure in that it mostly sticks to one style (sun-drenched film noir) and one tone (absurdist comedy). It’s also a fine film, which suffers only when measured against the insanely high standard that Anderson’s past work has set.
Even if you were not around during the 1970s, Inherent Vice comes across as a faded, nostalgic memory. Being a faithful adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel, the film recounts the dying days of the free love era, laced with the look, feel and paraphernalia of the subculture. Anderson’s comedic thriller peppers itself with restless, almost out of place laughter, while dedicating itself to the themes of the early Seventies. One is reminded of private-eye classics such as Roman Polanski’s Chinatown and Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, with traces of Zucker-Abrahams comedies like Airplane! and The Naked Gun. For many, the homage to 1970s filmmaking will be a very real and thrilling look down memory lane. For others, it’ll be a history lesson like no other found in modern day filmmaking.
Of course, Guardians isn’t perfect, as it struggles to find a consistent tone. Sometimes it wants to be more adult, with bawdier language and sexual innuendo. For instance, Quill’s rumination that “If I had a black light, this place would look like a Jackson Pollock painting!” is pretty sophisticated for mainstream PG-13 fare. Other times, it feels as though the filmmakers are pandering to a much younger audience. You can almost visualize a ‘Dancing Groot’ doll gyrating in your kid’s Happy Meal.
For every good sequence, there’s one that’s muddled with bad camerawork and editing. Like a lot of blockbuster action, it’s barely legible; you have to work to keep up with it, and that work interferes with the enjoyment. The story also sags in the middle, as it seems to exist mainly to fill out the run-time. The protagonists take the MacGuffin to a dude they wish to sell it to, but the only real function of the section is to exposit what it is. It turns a big chunk of the plot into a shrug.
Savages Directed by Oliver Stone Written by Don Winslow USA, 2012 Leave it to none other than Oliver Stone to deliver this summer’s most satisfyingly pulpy action flick. Stone might as well have been pronounced dead to the world of cinema over the past decade. Let’s face it, the guy hasn’t been taken serious since the mid …
As expected given its torturous production history the movie is a mess but thankfully not a dud of Van Helsing proportions, it’s a handsome looking film but the interference and mangling of the material, as with The Road, is plain to see. The Wolfman Directed by Joe Johnston Woof, woof. A mere fifteen months late, …