How exactly do you go about adapting a classic children’s character to the big screen?
Stay too true to the source material and you’ll miss out on the audience of hyperactive tweens; stray too far, however, and you end up with a soulless “product”.…
The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies is a decent enough end to the Middle Earth saga
Thirteen years (and several billion dollars) after it first appeared on our screens, Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth saga has seemingly come to an end.
It may offend the more delicate among us to discuss Film in terms of grosses and bums on seats, but even in the age of The Avengers: Age of Ultron, The Lord of the Rings trilogy was still a financial force to be reckoned with.…
Wait for The Drop: Hardy and Gandolfini shine in this Boston crime drama (RIP, James Gandolfini)
Crime dramas are a dime a dozen.
It’s a popular genre with plenty of easily recyclable tropes: the discount bins runneth over with Lock, Stock ripoffs and Danny Dyer Mockney crime capers. Then again, if you’re with Dennis Lehane, foremost authority on the seedy underbelly of Boston, and Michaël R.…
Finding Vivian Maier is a sharp-eyed portrait of a brilliant recluse
What is it about genius that fascinates us, especially unappreciated genius?
From Edgar Allen Poe to Vincent Van Gogh, there’s a certain narrative of tortured brilliance that we’ve become accustomed to. It’s rare, however, that the story begins with a box of undeveloped negatives going up for auction.…
Nightcrawler makes a scintillating roadshow out of the modern media circus
The best films are often a product of the age in which they were made (interesting word that, “product”).
Without the post-‘Nam disillusionment of the mid-‘70s, no Taxi Driver. Without the on-air suicide of TV news reporter Christine Chubbuck the same year, no Network.…
The Babadook is the best horror film you’ll see in 2014
In a genre that too often inclined towards schlock, it’s rare to find a horror film that truly has something to say about the human condition.
The Babadook is just such a film.
A micro-budget Australian horror, The Babadook takes place in the home of the frazzled Amelia (Essie Davis) and her seven-year-old son Samuel (Noah Wiseman), who has “behavioral problems”.…
Fury is a war film full of sound and signifying a lot
Is there anything quite so cinematic as war? The mud, the blood, the bullets, the explosions; the scale, the intimacy; the stakes, both large and small.
An elegantly uniformed rider on a pale horse makes his way through a graveyard of shattered military hardware.…
Joe ties Nicolas Cage to the stake and prods a great performance out of him
Nicholas Cage is a visionary; he strides boundaries.
Few can claim a filmography as eclectic as his: from Rumble Fish to Vampires Kiss, through Con Air and Face/Off, Adaptation and Lord of War, to Ghost Rider, Kick-Ass, and now Joe.…
’71 is a Greengrassian blast from the past
The sound of boxing over black – the thuds, the grunts, the heavy breathing – sounds very much like war.
When ’71 opens, however, our young squaddie, Gary Hook (Starred Up’s Jack O’Connell) has not been deployed to Northern Ireland, but is participating in an officially mandated bout.…
The Equalizer is a fairly brutal middle-of-the-road actioner
The major issue that almost every attempt to adapt beloved ‘80s TV franchises to the big screen is tone.
Michael Mann’s Miami Vice might have had cigarette boats and more suit jacket-t-shirt combos than you can shake a brick (of coke) at, but, amidst all the neo-noir stylings, it lost it sense of cool.…