Given that it seems like a blank screen and a couple of loud roars would make any Godzilla movie superior to 1998’s Roland Emmerich debacle, one would think the cards would be stacked in director Gareth Edwards’s favor to bring the iconic monster back to the big screen with success.… Continue reading
You know fun? Think the exact opposite of that and you’ll be in the right mindset for Sabotage, an exceedingly dreary and uninteresting revenge/whodunit that easily ranks as one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s worst films. Stripped of his larger-than-life persona and forced to play a grieving widower and leader of a… Continue reading
If you like bizarre, confusing tonal shifts wrapped around a sloppy, never-believable-for-a-minute story, look no further than Labor Day. A Lifetime movie with good actors, the film represents the first true misstep of writer/director Jason Reitman’s (Juno) career. This is one strange film, with melodrama that doesn’t dig deep, uncomfortable,… Continue reading
Kellan Lutz gets first billing in The Legend of Hercules, but it should probably go to the green screen instead. Looking dark (all the worse with 3D glasses), muddled, and ugly, the film is a total mess from both a story and acting standpoint. Only some unintentional (I think?) humor… Continue reading
Emerging as the lead candidate of the 2012 Oscar bait sweepstakes, Hyde Park on Hudson is a disappointingly bland mix of drama and comedy that never comes close to gelling. It also paints a pretty unflattering picture of everyone involved, from Franklin D. Roosevelt on down. Whether this was intentional… Continue reading
Consider the tagline “Don’t ever cross Alex Cross” a fair warning: creativity is at a premium here. A warmed-over relic from the 90’s incompetently directed by Rob Cohen, Alex Cross is a mess from top to bottom. It’s bad enough that the villain and story are preposterous, but we get… Continue reading
The Woman in Black should satiate those looking to see Daniel Radcliffe wandering down dark hallways for an hour and a half, but that’s about it. This is one unimaginative, largely scare-free experience that exploits every haunted house cliché known to man, down to boo scares with random animals and… Continue reading
Green Lantern is a loud, obnoxious, joyless video game that pretty much makes you want to write off superhero origin movies all together. The genre has become such a cash cow that studios now just assume that throwing a character onto the heap automatically guarantees a franchise. Warner Brothers may… Continue reading
I Am Number Four is being billed as a high-octane superhero movie. It does eventually become one in the third act, but it happens long after anyone could possibly care about the story, characters, or anything else in this teenybopper cross-pollination of every superhero film ever made and the Twilight… Continue reading
Films where one line of dialogue can solve every narrative problem are always an uphill climb. We, the audience, know the solution early on, but we’re stuck watching tongue-tied actors pratfall their way through a script that depends upon that key line of dialogue to not be spoken. Otherwise we… Continue reading