Chris Pine

‘The Finest Hours’ is an exciting true story of courage and honor rendered in the most unexciting fashion possible.

Normally, I’m a fair and agreeable chap who approaches each movie with an open mind. I must warn you, however, that my review of Into the Woods will be neither fair nor agreeable. I will not be fawning over director Rob Marshall, who seems clueless as to what his own movie is about, nor will I be singing the praises of Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim, who has probably written grocery lists more pleasing to the ear than these tunes. What I will be doing is trying to deconstruct one of my most grueling cinematic experiences of 2014.

Into the Woods Written by James Lepine, based on a musical by Stephen Sondheim Directed by Rob Marshall USA, 2014 What is there to say about a film that is destined to succeed in spite of its weak ambitions and generic form? Rob Marshall’s newest project, Into the Woods, has been granted a Christmas Day …

There’s nothing more depressing than a lazy comedy, and Horrible Bosses 2 suffers from a terminal case of laziness. Instead of gleefully diving into its richly-black premise, it settles for obvious sight gags and uninspired improvisations. A talented comedic cast is wasted on material that aims for mediocrity and hits the target over and over again. There simply aren’t enough laughs here to justify this film’s existence.

The opening scene of Joe Carnahan’s latest shows a man getting jettisoned from the driver’s side window of his car in a crash, hitting the ground rolling and ending up sitting on the street with barely a scratch. That’s how this film begins, and it only gets zanier from there. The plot follows a down-on-his-luck limo driver, Stretch (Patrick Wilson), who finds out he has to pay $6,000 of gambling debts by midnight. Roger Karos (Chris Pine), a deranged billionaire, offers to cover his debt if he drives him around for the evening, an experience that gets more hellish with each passing minute.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit Written by Adam Cozad and David Koepp Directed by Kenneth Branagh USA, 2014 To say that Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit could be worse is both true and damning with the faintest of praise. This reboot of the famous character created by the late Tom Clancy is almost aggressively generic, an uninspired …

In almost everything, there is subtext, intentional or not. In the ‘not’ category is the significant black cloud coming with the silver lining of three massive developments in movieland this year. Firstly, after months of feverish speculation, J.J. Abrams was chosen as the man to helm the return of Star Wars to the big screen; he confirmed his worthiness for the role with the release of Star Trek Into Darkness, a mega-hit blockbuster action adventure putting the highly rated Star Trek 2009 into the shadows; almost in an attempt to draw attention away from Disney and Spielberg’s protégé, James Cameron announced that the most successful film of all time, his film Avatar, would indeed have the three sequels he had long discussed, thankfully with different screen writers covering the wordy bits. Cue much jubilation from fandom; the silver lining. The malignant black cloud, the subtext, was the continued throes of the science-fiction genre as it is starved to death.

In early 2006, there was released a superb teaser trailer for what looked like a chaotic, testosterone fuelled action film of insane sensibility. Opening with classical music and title cards revealing that this movie was from “the makers of” Four Weddings & A Funeral, Notting Hill and Love Actually, the brief spot promptly nuked the …

The closing moments of the 2009 reboot of Star Trek saw a revival of its source material’s famous slogan regarding the ongoing mission of the Enterprise:

Star Trek Directed by J.J. Abrams The greatest challenge of taking on any known cultural property in the world of film is that of fulfilling the “fan-service” requirements held by the stalwart fans of said property. Take too many liberties in pursuit of making a more interesting film, and you’ll attract ire (Ang Lee’s Hulk); …