KILLING GROUND is killing it. The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) has tainted American storytelling so badly that even in a brilliant movie called UNFORGIVEN (1992), though all the characters do in fact remain unforgiven, yet the lead character finds redemption. So foreign movies, unbound by the juvenile strictures of the contradictory MPAA, are like a cold bucket of … Read More
THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES
The wrath of Tolkien, the majesty of Jackson, the fickleness of Fandom. Wizard Peter Jackson concludes the movie trilogy that stole his baby fat. THE HOBBIT comes to a spectacular end – greed, fury, purity of heart and interspecies love – to the wonderment of appreciative moviegoers and the chagrin of sniveling purists. THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE … Read More
THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG
Attack of the Action Sequences. Hobbit Bilbo Baggins and the troupe of Dwarves from Erebor continue their quest through Middle Earth to reclaim the Dwarves’ homeland from the Dragon Smaug. Along the way they are attacked by Orcs, cocooned by giant spiders, imprisoned by Elves, barreled through rapids, smuggled by a boatman, sculpt a statue of gold, and ascend through … Read More
SHOOTER
Shooter is Sharp but Misses the Marky. SHOOTER achieves that balance between action, political skullduggery, pretty orange explosions and Mark Wahlberg’s big guns (and I don’t mean his military sniper rifles), which notches it a cut above most political thrillers of its paranoid ilk – until its pat ending. With his shrapnel-explosive performance in THE DEPARTED, Wahlberg shrugged off the … Read More