Historically, Robert Zemeckis’ dramas have worked by harnessing their thick characterizations and exaggerated situations to unabashedly play to the audience’s emotions. From Forrest Gump’s run across America to Chuck Noland’s bald-faced wailing at the loss of his beloved volleyball Wilson in “Cast Away,” Zemeckis’ finest work may be coated in Hollywood sheen, but it nonetheless […]
The “Silent Hill” video game franchise is beloved primarily for its ability to instill dread in the player by pairing unsettling art direction and atmospheric music with character-driven narratives. In 2006, when director Christophe Gans adapted the series for the screen, he chucked the Japanese game developers’ multi-faceted storytelling approach out the window in favor
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One barely expects to find jokes referencing taboo topics like pedophilia, threesomes, and the use of Nair as an ass-grooming agent in an R-rated, John Hughes-inspired teen comedy, so the fact that they’ve turned up in a PG-13 version produced by Nickelodeon is shocking. And these gags are only the tip of the iceberg for
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If it weren’t for the ‘Scope cinematography, one could easily mistake “Alex Cross” for a rejected CBS pilot. Consider the main characters: a psychologist/homicide detective protagonist who has the ability to read body language with near-perfect accuracy, a partner who loves him like a brother, a heinously violent villain whose motivations aren’t made clear until
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If one were to graph the quality of the “Paranormal Activity” movies, the result would look much like a sine wave. The first film kicked off the series with great promise, thanks to the high tension that it was able to elicit from only two people, a camera, and a long, dark hallway. Its sequel
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“Seven Psychopaths” is not so much under- or over-written as it is written. It’s a comedic crime thriller that becomes about its own construction ala “Adaptation,” with writer/director Martin McDonaugh figuring as the lead. But unlike the Spike Jonze film, “Seven Psychopaths” never really gels right; its disparate elements, often strong on their own, chafe against
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Although the found footage format is hardly new, dating all the way back to 1980’s “Cannibal Holocaust,” the success of the “Paranormal Activity” series has ushered in its ubiquity in the horror genre. Most of the time, a movie’s use of this now tired style is a signal that the filmmakers don’t have anything original
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Greeting moviegoers less than two years after the release of the first film in the trilogy, “Atlas Shrugged: Part II – The Strike” comes equipped with a brand new director, cast, and writing team. Unfortunately, this complete creative overhaul results in little improvement over the lumbering, TV-grade original, which took Ayn Rand’s infamous 1957 literary
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Despite the jarring locational shift from the streets of present-day Boston to those of 1980 Tehran, Ben Affleck’s “Argo” is very similar to his previous effort, “The Town.” As he did in that robbery thriller, Affleck here takes a straightforward heist plot and transforms it into a respectable piece of entertainment by distinctly evoking the
Whenever a film critic writes that a movie “doesn’t know what it wants to be,” the oft-used line is invariably the thesis of an overwhelmingly negative review. The reason for this is obvious: If a filmmaker’s intentions are unclear, then their work can’t adequately convey a message — the fundamental act of storytelling. But there
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