Earth’s delicate balance is a theme that pervades the modern ecology movement, and the potential disruption of this balance is the prime factor behind the fear of global warming and overall climate change among professional biologists, amateur naturalists, and concerned citizens. Fantastic Fungi, an 80-minute documentary, attempts to contribute to the public discourse by presenting…
Avengers: Endgame brings the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s (MCU) third phase to a close in splendid fashion, designating much of its three-hour runtime to character arcs and the wider narrative, versus intergalactic fireworks and fisticuffs. In fact, Anthony and Joe Russo’s finale is an intelligent film, introducing novel MCU concepts, “hard” science and a supervillain worthy…
The special forces sub-genre combines elements of the cop, spy and soldier film, and is characterized by jargon, hardware, institutionalized yet independent characters and almost-but-not-quite overwhelming odds. Notable examples include “Tears of the Sun,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Triple Frontier” and “The Expendables” franchise. Given their practice of taking established generic traditions and infusing them with…
Somber is the mood in the first trailer for Avengers: Endgame and rightfully it should be. As you should recall, Thanos — after piecing together the Infinity Gauntlet — has eliminated half the population of Earth and decimated the ranks of the superhero team at the end of “Avengers: Infinity War.” The remaining Avengers and…
Skrulls. Kree. Oh my! Earth being stuck in the middle of two alien races doing battle is bad, but adding Ronan the Destroyer (remember him from “Guardians of the Galaxy”?) into the mix makes the situation even worse. Luckily, we have Captain Marvel around to keep the fray from causing our untimely destruction. The film,…
Who doesn’t want a movie to start and end and basically be one big bang? More conflict (and guns) brings better drama, right? In the case of Free Fire, that axiom does not, regrettably, hold true. The film is about an arms deal that goes terribly wrong — and because it goes so very wrong,…
Prior to Kong: Skull Island, there have been at least a half dozen feature films based on the monstrous King Kong character, including the original 1933 classic, 1962’s campy “King Kong vs. Godzilla,” the Dino De Laurentiis 1976 budget-breaker and Peter Jackson’s overlong and ambitious 2005 edition, among others. Despite the various incarnations, the plot…
