The first of two John DeLorean-focused films to be released in 2019 (the other being a documentary/re-enactment hybrid “Framing John DeLorean”), Driven does not adopt the typical biopic template. Rather, it positions itself almost as an eyewitness perspective to the entire scandal from the point of view of the FBI informer who ratted John DeLorean…
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…
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,…
Thirteen years after Peter Jackson first introduced us to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, we find ourselves at the conclusion of the prequel Hobbit trilogy, and thus our last foray into Middle Earth. As a result, cinemas are bound to be packed with fans both fierce and casual, all reluctantly saying farewell…
This is it. The final trailer to the final installment of Peter Jackson’s epic telling of J.R.R. Tolkien’s classics. Whereas the first trailer for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies hinted at little to come, this trailer heavily invests in the buildup to the war that is to define the start of The…
Treasure is a mighty influencer. And with so much of it available after the fall of Smaug, everyone — the dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield, the Wood Elves led by Thranduil and the Men of Long Lake led by Bard — are willing to scrap alliances for a piece of it in Peter Jackson’s final…
Sometimes movie critics will re-evaluate a film years later to determine if there was something better or worse that they missed during the first viewing. That happened to me for the horror film, The Shining (during round two, I clued in on more of the nuances and thus liked the film much more than I…
