There have been a lot of very dope action scenes this year – the church scene in Kingsman: The Secret Service, the fight between The Rock and Jason Statham in Furious 7, and basically everything in Mad Max: Fury Road, to name just a few. Basically, we’ve gotten some incredible action sequences this year. This …
These days, the superhero genre is one of the most bankable genres of film. However, a quarter century ago, the cinematic language of the modern superhero film was just beginning to be developed. 25 years ago this August, a bizarre proto-superhero film was released that would set the table for genre-blending aspects that have come …
Some of the best things in life come in pairs, and film is no different. No, I don’t mean sequels and/or remakes, because I think we all know how those often turn out. Instead, I mean those actors and directors who very frequently collaborate on films, so much so that it feels odd when the …
Liam Neeson is Hollywood’s most bankable action star. That’s a statement of fact, but how do we know it is fact? How much more bankable is he than others? First off, we take a look at the box office returns for his action films and match them against the budgets and see what sort of …
This week’s biggest upcoming project was one so weird that we needed a few days to process it. It has been called Godzilla meets Being John Malkovich and Adaptation (possibly even Lost in Translation for good measure), and if it seems like those two titles don’t add up in anyway whatsoever, you’re not far off. …
Just days after the 39th anniversary of the conviction of Patty Hearst back on March 20, 1976, Deadline is reporting that Fox 2000 has acquired the rights to a new, untitled book being written by Jeffrey Toobin about the life and kidnapping of Hearst. The writers behind Big Eyes, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, will …
Middle-aged men with a particular skillset have found their patron saint in Liam Neeson. Luckily, a distinctive visual style and some added character detailing keep Run All Night running smoother than most of its sluggish brethren. There’s certainly nothing new here, but this slick little film dispenses its thrills and kills with surprising effectiveness.
I don’t care if you’re Thor or James Bond or Tony Stark, the only guy in all of movies who is capable of kicking anyone’s ass at any time as of today, is a character played by Liam Neeson. Bill Simmons honored Neeson as the two-time recipient of the Action Hero Championship Belt. He’s the …
One of the most anticipated films of 2015 is Martin Scorsese’s Silence. Although that anticipation was under the presumption that Silence would actually come out this year, let alone be made. The film has been in pre-production for ages, by Marty’s account, nearly two decades, but the film is finally coming together with funding from Fábrica …
Some years are just great for certain genres, and this year was a great one for action. All across the board were films within different subgenres stepping up and delivering great action set pieces and characters. Consider the shot on the revolving tank gun revealing the totality of carnage in Dawn of the Planet of …
Shortly after the PR fallout of the Internet hating on U2’s Songs of Innocence album release, frontman Bono is in the news yet again with a story that’s arguably more WTF than the release of a smart watch. In an interview with The Independent regarding the release of his new film A Walk Among the …
There is a moment in the new thriller, A Walk Among the Tombstones, that you really feel things shifting into overdrive. The unstable elements in the film collide to raise expectations for the excitement to come. Unfortunately, that moment occurs about 90 minutes into the movie. The previous 90 minutes are consumed by Liam Neeson trying to solve a case we don’t care about while being distracted by a subplot we grow to despise. Predictable at every turn, this is a thrill-free zone that makes Non-Stop look like a masterpiece of suspense.
Seth MacFarlane has a dirty mind. He tells dirty jokes in occasionally clever, often crude ways, and without remorse. With Family Guy, he exhibits the full extent of his talents in thirty-minute stints to great effect. On the big screen, however, he may need someone to wrangle him in. While Ted (2012) was incredibly entertaining, it occasionally found itself slowing to a crawl. MacFarlane’s latest, A Million Ways to Die in the West, finds itself suffering a similar fate. Though highly entertaining, the film runs too long, leaves many of its characters in the lurch, and doesn’t give nearly enough screen time to its talented roster of actors.
A Million Ways to Die in the West Written by Seth MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin, and Wellesley Wild Directed by Seth MacFarlane USA, 2014 In his seemingly never-ending quest to provide meaty satire and goofing on many things in real life, Seth MacFarlane knows no bounds. With his mega-popular Family Guy and 2012’s Ted, he certainly …
Non-Stop Composed by John Ottman Varese Sarabande Records The latest entry in Liam Neeson’s Career Resurgence Extravaganza, Non-Stop has Neeson’s alcoholic air marshal Bill Marks unravel a mysterious bomb threat aboard a flight from New York to London. (Said flight is, in fact, non-stop.) When it’s not withholding key pieces of its mystery, Jaume Collet-Serra’s thriller …
Non-Stop Written by John W. Richardson, Chris Roach, and Ryan Engle Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra USA, 2014 Liam Neeson’s face has become a world-weary, pock-marked road map over the years, detailing a wholesome leading man’s travails into cinematic battle. In the last 6 years, he’s revitalized himself as a no-nonsense action hero, an unstoppably tough …
The LEGO Movie Written and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller USA, 2014 The opening moments of Pixar’s last great film to date, Toy Story 3, depict an intentionally, increasingly goofy and outlandish fantasy scenario in which all of the toys in Andy’s bedroom play a part. There are the heroic Sheriff Woody and …
Various directors take very differing stances when it comes to the ongoing threat of executive meddling. This, of course, is when the studio moneymen stop what you’re doing and tell you that what you’ve made will simply not cut it at the box office, that key demographics that their marketing department has been stringently working on (usually in the form of charts) will dislike your movie.
On December 14, 2012, a young man named Adam Lanza broke into a primary school and fatally shot 26 people in the small village of Sandy Hook, Connecticut. Twenty of them were children, aged 6 or 7. On that day, no matter where I went or what I did, I couldn’t stop thinking about the …
Wrath of the Titans Directed by Jonathan Liebesman Written by Dan Mazeau and David Leslie Johnson USA, 2012 As befits a sequel to a remake of a film that had absolutely no plot to speak of, Wrath of the Titans is all spectacle, a string of set pieces held together with the loosest connective tissue …
The Grey Written by Joe Carnahan and Ian Mackenzie Jeffers Directed by Joe Carnahan USA, 2012 Man vs. nature may be a narrative as old as time, but Joe Carnahan’s The Grey would probably have been most at home in the 1970s. Clocking in at a hefty, patient 117 minutes, boasting as bare-bones a plot …
Director Kim Ji-Woon, the man responsible for A Tale of Two Sisters, A Bittersweet Life, The Good, The Bad, and the Weird and the ultra-violent I Saw Devil has lined up his first American directing gig. Variety reported recently that Liam Neeson will be starring in the South Korean director’s Hollywood debut, Last Stand a …
15- Donnie Barksdale in The Gift Actor: Keanu Reeves Memorable quote: “Messing with the Devil is gonna get you burned. Everybody knows that.” Say what you will about Keanu Reeves, but given the right project, proper casting, and competent direction, the man can do a decent job. He is far from outstanding in The Gift, …