Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón’s explosive, white-knuckle sci-fi instant classic is a wonder to behold, with devastatingly realistic effects as a backdrop to a terrifying, compelling story and terrific work by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. It is both a concrete what-if story and a mesmerizing existential mindbender. The U.S Space Shuttle Explorer is docked at the…
While I certainly enjoyed the first trailer for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, I like the second one even more. Warner Bros. and crew have raised the ante with this trailer, hinting at alliances and double-crosses, hidden adorations and resentments, and of course fantastical conflicts waged within a finely crafted world. As the dwarves,…
How far would you go to find your child if he or she were missing? What laws would or should a parent break to make sure they could have their babies back again? These are the fundamental questions asked in the newest film directed by Denis Villeneuve (“Incendies“), Prisoners, which tells the tale of a…
The battle for man’s mind, body and soul has waged since the Garden of Eden and nearly as long on film. It’s not necessarily the easiest theme to convey properly but one infinitely easier to do well using martial arts as the catalyst. I’d gather this is one of the driving reasons Keanu Reeves, a…
Scarlett Johansson can use her sexuality against me anytime. Even if she is an alien and is using me as some form of food source or as a resource for her home world. By the way, that’s exactly what she is and is doing in the independent science fiction thriller Under the Skin. The trailer,…
Jayne Mansfield’s Car is a tedious, depressing dysfunctional film about a tedious, depressing, dysfunctional pair of families, headed by patriarchs Robert Duvall and John Hurt, respectively. It seems that 30 years before, Kingsley Bedford (Hurt) stole Jim Caldwell’s (Duvall) wife, Naomi (Tippi Hedren, whose most famous role was in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds“) and took…
Most famous and renowned for his passionate tales of romance, Kar Wai Wong still seems like an inspired fit for Chinese martial arts moviemaking. The beloved director has a lyrical control of tone and atmosphere, can precisely pace a picture, and has exhibited careful control of the camera. The challenge of melding artful storytelling with…
