“The Hangover” series has turned out to be a lot like the titular post-inebriation state. There was an initial burst of wild fun that has given way to hours of pain and suffering that makes you wonder if the fun part was worth it in the first place. It is clear now that the first […]
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“Fast & Furious 6” (or just “Furious 6,” if you go by the title card) is Justin Lin’s fourth film in this cash-machine of a franchise, and by any objective measure, the director has perfected the form. As the series has expanded its focus from street racing to action-heists with street racing involved, Lin has
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I’m genuinely eager to thumb through William Joyce’s picture book “The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs,” the credited source material for “Epic,” just to see how much in common the movie has with the 1996 text. That’s because the movie plays less like an original creation than the result of its (count ‘em)
“Star Trek Into Darkness” is not a film that will be hailed for breaking any new cinematic ground. Even to this critic, who regretfully hasn’t seen 1982’s “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” which the movie apparently borrows heavily from, the story came across as little more than a chain of sci-fi blockbuster clichés.
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“The Great Gatsby” is an emphatically faithful adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel not so much in plot, but in spirit. Writer/director Baz Luhrmann remains true to the text in terms that make its source material instantly recognizable: the 1920s setting, the cast of characters, the arch of the melancholy story. But it’s only by
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“Iron Man 3,” co-written and directed by Shane Black, whose quick-witted 2005 indie “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” likely helped lead Robert Downey Jr. score the title role in this star-reviving series, is two movies in one. More often than not, such a critical observation lends itself to a scathing analysis about how a picture doesn’t
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After his thematically challenging, emotionally taxing first two films, “Shotgun Stories” and “Take Shelter,” one wouldn’t have naturally predicted that budding American auteur Jeff Nichols would next move on to an old-fashioned crowd-pleaser of a boys’ adventure film. But I suppose Nichols needed a break from doom and gloom, just as audiences do, and there
Those with no experience in François Ozon’s complex films might initially mistake “In the House” for an inspirational teacher movie — and in its own wicked, French way, it is. The curmudgeonly, washed-up-novelist of an English teacher protagonist (Fabrice Luchini) may not find the motivation to inspire his home-room of 20 impressionable youths—“The worst class I’ve
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Filmmaker Olivier Assayas was about the same age as protagonist Gilles (Clément Métayer) in 1971, the year “Something in the Air” takes place, and the film is undeniably intended to be read as an autobiography. It’s two hours of Assayas recreating that culturally turbulent time in France’s recent history—the period following the May 1968 revolution
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“Big” and “loud” are two adjectives that have become synonymous with Michael Bay productions over the years, but usually they refer to cars, shootouts, and alien robots, not actual human characters, as in “Pain & Gain,” the filmmaker’s lowest budgeted film by several fold since his 1995 debut “Bad Boys.” Despite the smaller pool of
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