The Iceman is a cool but hollow affair, despite Shannon’s chilling performance

 

What’s with our obsession with people, usually men, who do very bad things and the current trend for trying to make us sympathize with them, serial killers especially?

Say what you want about the moral ambiguity of the age in which we live, but for or every Zodiac that makes a game of tracking down the monster, there’s a Badlands that romanticizes their exploits or a Seven Psychopaths making them figures of fun.…

Gangster Squad assembles all the old cliches to little effect

 

Post-war L.A. The glitzy and glamorous City of Angels is under the thrall of brutal mob boss Mickey Cohen, with mob slayings on every corner and half the police force on the make.

Or so Gangster Squad, the third feature of director Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland, 30 Minutes or Less), would have us believe.…