A Time to Ill. An ingenious tripwire thriller, where a series of unrelated events all come together in the wrong place at the wrong time – 11:14 pm. Writer-director Greg Marcks crafts 11:14 like a master weaver of spells, throwing us into compelling vignettes already in progress, in the grand tradition of Tarantino. That being said, 11:14 is reminiscent of … Read More
PANDORUM
Pablum-orum. PANDORUM is One Great Idea subsumed by all the bloodied action and trapped-in-space mayhem and frenzied filmstock required to hold a modern audience’s attention. But it frenzies up well, which accounts for its style-over-substance cucumber rating. Top-notch set design, direction, editing, all creating a claustrophobic impression of a star cruiser too long in space. Though PANDORUM is rife with … Read More
HOSTAGE
Like a hostage, we are captive. There’s no denying Bruce Willis has based his career on The John McClane (which is something like The Tom Cruise, only a lot more tolerable) – that intensely smug, sassy maverick. That’s not to say he isn’t a great actor, but The John McClane has woven itself so deeply into Willis’s turbo-charged man-roles over … Read More
3:10 TO YUMA 2007
Black hat, White hat, Gray souls… Every way of man is right in his own eyes. – Wade quoting the Book of Proverbs, 3:10 TO YUMA. Every modern Western released after Eastwood’s mighty 1992 elegy has laid hollow claim to “The best western since UNFORGIVEN.” 3:10 TO YUMA is. That’s because – like UNFORGIVEN – YUMA is not a “Western,” … Read More
X-MEN: THE LAST STAND
X-eunt in X-asperation. Action without heart. Spectacle without logic. Brawn without brains. Director Brett Ratner balances on Bryan Singer’s shoulders, attempting to hold up the mutant world Singer so reverently rendered in X-MEN (2000) and X-MEN UNITED (2003). But he falls off – and helms X-MEN: THE LAST STAND, the third in the x-franchise, with as much reverence and talent … Read More