It’s no small compliment from me when I tell you that I believe Scott Cooper’s Black Mass can run with Scorsese’s mob trilogy of Goodfellas, Casino and, especially, the South Boston-flavored The Departed. It's that dirty, nasty and compelling. Now there’s no question that Cooper is retracing steps that were laid in the blood-soaked mud by Scorsese’s enormous shoe. But if you dialed into the madness and menace of those aforementioned crime sagas, then Black Mass is right up your alley.
Read moreFantastic 4 Film Review
I feel that I should preface this review by stating that I am not the biggest fan of Fantastic 4 from any iterations of the comic book, so my expectations have been not at all high that someone someday will make a live-action Fantastic 4 movie that works. Fox’s latest attempt, directed by Josh Trank of Chronicle fame, doesn’t necessarily get things wrong as much as it doesn’t get the things it needs to right, which is a shame because there are a lot of interesting ideas that probably would have worked well in comic form. But what it amounts to here is essentially a 100-minute long trailer to a movie we never end up seeing, or better yet, wouldn’t want to see.
Read moreAnt-Man Movie Review
AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON has about the same problem that ANT-MAN has in this critic's opinion. To a major extent, too much of this film feels like Marvel is just checking off entries to a list and not allowing this film to breathe on its own. Granted, for ANT-MAN it’s more of an annoyance than anything else. But while I do appreciate and admire the scope of what Marvel is still doing, which frankly hasn’t been attempted at this extent before, it can lead to a frustrating film-going experience for some when you can sense how much the movie wants to break away and do its own thing.
Read moreSuicide Squad SDCC 2015 Trailer
Suicide Squad Trailer from SDCC 2015
Read more'Daredevil' Series Review
Marvel Studios has always been a mixed bag for me. When they’re able to be very true to their characters and make the plot hit the beats of the big storylines, we can get a Guardians of The Galaxy or Winter Soldier out of them. Or, we can get a convoluted bag of half thought-out ideas with numerous plot holes, but they’re so visually interesting on screen we try not to think about it (aka Avengers: Age Of Ultron). When Marvel is able to make me believe all of these things share a continuity, it’s when I get most invested in theses movies of theirs. But one thing that is easily found in the source material that I don’t see in the movies are the normal people, the neighborhoods, and the rest of the world. Enter “Marvel’s Daredevil,” the first of five planned Netflix shows, which provides the exact storytelling boost that the MCU needed in my opinion.
Read more'Mad Max: Fury Road' Film Review
A lot of times when you try to revisit a beloved film from the past, the end result simply doesn’t live up to the memory and nostalgia you had for the original. The recent Indiana Jones and Star Wars prequels immediately come to mind. Yet, Mad Max: Fury Road not only lives up to the previous films, hell, you could make the case that it surpasses them. It also perfectly stands well on its own as an action classic. From the opening minute of the movie, the action starts full throttle and rarely eases up until the credits roll. It sets the bar extremely high for action movies and will inevitably be compared to other films for the next couple of decades. It’s a film that will not only make Mad Max fans happy, but will recruit legions of new fans who weren’t even born when the originals hit the big screen, or even knew about them.
Read more'It Follows' Film Review
It Follows – from writer/director David Robert Mitchell (The Myth of the American Sleepover) – arrives riding a wave of buzz from various festival showings and a strong box office turnout during its limited release. It will almost certainly go down as one of the creepier, stylish, and overall better offerings from the horror genre realized in 2015 (despite some faults) – and it shows that Mitchell belongs next to Adam Wingard (You’re Next), on the list of talented indie film storytellers lending their skills to the genre today...
Read more'Chappie' Movie Review
I know it’s folly to complain about new stories just because they owe their existence to old ones, but sometimes when a film pays constant homage to other movies, it only leads to unwanted distraction. Case in point: a film like Chappie, which so eerily evokes our collective and vivid memories of Short Circuit, Short Circuit 2 and sometimes Robocop, that Neill Blomkamp’s latest sci-fi spectacular plays a little bit more like a retro mash-up than a fresh and exciting melody. But hey, at least Die Antwoord mixed it.
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