Based on a popular graphic novel by Marasume Shirow and directed by Rupert Sanders (“Snow White and the Huntsman”), Ghost in the Shell is a visually stunning experience with a fine core performance by Scarlett Johansson (“Captain America: Civil War”), but it borrows so much of other, mostly better science fiction films and TV series,…
A well-balanced blend of Prohibition-era gangster thriller, western, and vampire movie, Bloodrunners is an intriguing prospect. It’s no game-changer, and it never shakes its TV pilot aesthetic, but it wears its hybrid influences well and betrays a knowing sense of its own absurdity. It’s 1933 and everyone, from mobsters to cops, are getting tired of…
In his powerful and beautifully realized documentary, Tower, Keith Maitland (“A Song For You: The Austin City Limits Story”) movingly recreates the shock and heartbreak of the random shooting of 49 people at the University of Texas in the summer of 1966. The attack was the first mass shooting at any school in the U.S.,…
A B-actioner with grade-A action seems like a cinematic contradiction, but what better way to describe “John Wick” and its sparkling new sequel? The cheesy one-liners, stock villains, thin plot, and characters built entirely on an actor’s presence all put John Wick: Chapter 2 in B-ish territory (an easier place for shoot-em-up pics to find…
Over two decades ago, the British film scene was drastically up-rooted and challenged by the likes of an ambitious, dangerously addictive film centered on a closely knit group of Scottish junkies. That, and dead head-twisting babies crawling on ceilings. Danny Boyle’s on-screen adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s “Trainspotting” was a definite first in venturing into explicit…
Unless your name is James Nguyen (the man responsible for treasures like “Birdemic 2: The Resurrection”), it’s difficult to laugh at a terrible movie on a shoestring budget. The temptation is to look for the silver linings, the more admirable qualities of what, frankly, looks like a disaster in pixels. Who doesn’t want to be…
All of its potential and promise is thwarted by an incessant reliance on cliché. What’s left is a story that has nothing intriguing or ingenious to offer and so feels underwhelming from start to finish.
