A dream-like atmosphere pervades David Lowery’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, a nostalgic tone poem that hints of Terrence Malick with its sweeping vistas and soft voice-overs. Though the title card that opens the film says, “This was in Texas,” there is no delineation of time or place, and it is left to the viewer to…
Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson) is uncharitable, misogynistic, nihilistic, a racist, a chain-smoker, a raging alcoholic, and a bad father, but Rampart, the movie he’s thrust into, is astonishingly dull. Helmed by Oren Moverman, it explores the state of the LAPD circa the late ’90s but, despite what its title suggests, the film isn’t about the…
I have a friend who once wrote a novel about an entire minor league stadium (players and fans alike) which is suddenly transported through a wormhole to third century Palestine. There, the modern-day folks meet Barabbas (who was freed in Jesus’s stead) roaming about the desert. The players and fans change Barabbas’ name to Barry…
Guy is a criminal. Guys cleans up his act, goes legit and starts a family. Guys gets pulled back in because someone in his family screwed up. Guy wages war on the perps when things go sour. We’ve seen the premise many times before so there isn’t much to get excited about for Universal Pictures’…
Although I hadn’t seen the original 1970s Charles Bronson flick, it wasn’t difficult to figure out rather quickly what the plot trajectory for The Mechanic was. This isn’t necessarily a death knell for an action movie — what is is the lack of any heart thumping action. And that people, is exactly the case here;…
It’s an interesting concept: Soldiers returning home after the Iraqi war serving what’s left of their enlistment period as messengers for the Army, instructed to tell unsuspecting husbands, wives or other next of kin that their loved ones won’t be returning. I’m pretty sure it’s not official policy, but that’s what happens to Staff Sergeant…
Isolationism, claustrophobia and delirium are motherfuckers — especially when they’re mixed together with the darkness of space. Pandorum is word roughly devised to describe this scenario and director Christian Alvart hopes his movie of the same name can scare the shit out of you because of it. It can’t. Not for any reason other than…
