Laden with clamorous battle scenes, sweeping visual effects and a fairly conventional storyline, Pacific Rim delivers in its appeal but lingers dangerously close to the entrance to the vault of forgettable, inconsequential summer films. That’s mostly due to the fact this — in the most simplistic of analogies — “Godzilla” meets “Transformers” movie suffers from…
Many of William Shakespeare’s heroines are proud and witty women who are reluctant to be wooed; for example, Rosaline of Love’s Labor’s Lost, and Rosalind of As You Like It. One of the most high-spirited characters in Shakespeare is Beatrice, the niece of Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing, a sharp-tongued woman who more than…
In a post “Bambi 2” world, the irony of titling a picture The Last Exorcism Part 2 is seemingly left unacknowledged in this dour, occasionally effective demon possession chiller. Director Ed Gass-Donnelly’s film seems to wrestle between delivering on cheap jump scares and delving into something considerably more unsettling, the tale of a fundamentally good…
“At some point you have to choose between life and fiction. The two are very close, but they never actually touch.” These words of Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal apply as much to their directorial debut, The Words, as they do to the story within it. A touching drama about the world of writing, this…
A discourteous comedian takes the place of a king in Chang-min Choo’s elegant, languid Masquerade, a Korean costume drama starring the formidable Byung-hun Lee, sadly best known to American audiences as Storm Shadow, courtesy of the G.I. Joe franchise. Lee, who is a Korean star par excellence, is the film’s focus, portraying both the hardened,…
If you have missed Captain Jack Sparrow since seeing him in the last installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (2011’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides”), fear not, because he makes his long awaited return to the silver screen in what has apparently been dubbed The Lone Ranger. And luckily for director…
Second-time director Jim Field Smith offers more than the recommended daily allowance with Butter, a comedy that lets political satire slip straight through its fingers, if you’ll excuse the puns. In truth, the film, centered around an elaborate butter-carving competition, is an admirable attempt at parody, but while it offers a lot by way of…
