For many a superhero fan, whether in comic books, television or movie format, Spider-Man is likely to be a childhood favorite. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s creation of a nerdy teenager who acquires the abilities of a spider has struck nerves (or web strands) with multiple generations, as Peter Parker’s struggles with his new powers…
It’s hard to believe that Road to Hell is Albert Pyun’s 50th movie, and even harder to believe that he still can’t make a decent film. Originally shot in 2008, it’s surely a labor of love for the micro-budget auteur, although I’m not sure how much love it’s likely to receive beyond the initiated. Heavily…
For a film franchise that began in 1931 (with Boris Karloff in the original title role) and includes literally dozens of pictures, there are still some new things I learned from this latest edition (directed by Alex Kurtzman, “People Like Us”) of The Mummy. For instance, mummies and other otherworldly entities — even though buried…
There is an idealized Wonder Woman. It’s vague and often inconsistent in description, but seemingly ethereal in public consciousness, in spite of any prior comic book knowledge, or lack thereof. I would compare the cultural assumption to Superman, and the balancing act the original Richard Donner film had to pull off. The benefit of finally…
Time to head to port. Now. With its “final adventure” tag, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales glows with a compelling enough reason to re-rendezvous with Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp, “Alice Through the Looking Glass”), omitting how it will reward attendance with hollowed-out booty. Though ridding the stifled scope and static…
As Arthurian films have gone in recent years, the most epic in my opinion is probably “Excalibur” from 1981; the most interesting one is the 1995 Richard Gere vehicle, “First Knight”; the most fun was the 1963 animated “The Sword in the Stone”; while the best is easily 1975’s classic, “Monty Python and the Holy…
The benefit of foreign cinema is that they tend to tell stories that shed a light on their own culture and tell stories a U.S. production would probably warp and bend into something more palatable for our sensibilities, losing that bit of cultural spark that elevated the material in the first place. The drawback is…
