Sherlock Holmes is a character so ingrained in our cultural imagination that it’s hard to think up any new spin on him. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle invented a character who became an archetype, even for procedural television, as the airwaves are still littered with brilliant assholes who owe their very existence to the original detective of 221B Baker Street.
Love & Mercy Written by Oren Moverman & Michael A. Lerner Directed by Bill Pohlad USA, 2015 Based on the life of The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, Love & Mercy depicts the singer’s descent into mental illness at the peak of the band’s popularity in the 1960s, while in the 1980s a chance meeting with …
To fully appreciate Peter Jackson’s last foray into Middle-Earth, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, one must understand it’s actually two separate movies. The first movie is a sour, pseudo-Shakespearean morality play that has nothing to do with Hobbits. The second movie is a heartfelt rumination about friendship and self-sacrifice. For those willing to overlook the sour for the sweet, there are great treasures to be found, as Jackson brings his trilogy to a suitably-epic conclusion.
X-Men: Days of Future Past Written by Simon Kinberg Directed by Bryan Singer USA, 2014 It may be a slightly ominous sign that the best scene in X-Men: Days of Future Past features a totally new character to the infinite universe of mutants, who then all but vanishes from the rest of the film. Still, …
X-Men: Days of Future Past Written by Simon Kinberg Directed by Bryan Singer USA, 2014 The key virtue of the X-Men films has been their mutant-like ability to seamlessly blend with other genres. The Wolverine worked as samurai cinema. First Class played well as a Cold War-era Bond thriller. Since the comic’s inception, X-Men has been the “…in bed” fortune …
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Written by Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Guillermo del Toro Directed by Peter Jackson New Zealand, United Kingdom, and USA, 2013 The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is, no doubt, an improvement over The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, though perhaps because it is the second of three …
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Directed by Peter Jackson Written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, and Guillermo Del Toro New Zealand and USA, 2012 Who can blame Peter Jackson for not wanting to leave Middle-Earth? His adaptation of The Lord of the Rings book series, written by J.R.R. Tolkien, was an enormously successful …