Jaume Collet-Serra’s new action thriller Run All Night stars Liam Neeson as a once notorious hit man named Jimmy Conlon. Jimmy’s nickname was “The Gravedigger,” so you know just what kind of person we’re dealing with here. However, these days Jimmy is just a shadow of his former self, relying heavily on his long standing…
Over the course of three films, Neill Blomkamp has demonstrated a consistent interest in the body and the effects of the world upon it. “District 9” featured transformation into the undesirable while “Elysium” highlighted the inscription of class divisions onto the body. Chappie continues this conceit but with a reversal of Blomkamp’s debut — rather…
From its opening images of our planet illuminated by technology, to a remarkable long take that takes the viewer through the inner operation and impact of computer processing, Blackhat hooks the viewer both emotionally and intellectually. The film delivers an enthralling rendering of both the macro and micro scale of our interconnected digital world, offering…
At St. Paternus University in Berkeley, CA, a small group of researchers has spent the last three years experimenting with the Lazarus serum, a discovery they hope will help the medical community escape the pressures of time, saving more patients while avoiding negative side effects and loss of cognitive function. Frank (Mark Duplass, “Tammy”) and…
The problem with wisdom, we are told by a voiceover the moment Poker Night begins, is that you only get it after you need it. Hindsight, similarly, is like looking into a rear view mirror, unable to see what you’re going through until you’ve already passed it. Now that we know how important those words…
By their nature, submarine movies lend themselves to easy criticism — in terms of wordplay that is. Analogies such as “the performances were so painfully lacking that they ‘sunk’ the entire film” or “why watch this film when it should be isolated and submerged beneath two miles of ocean?” could easily take form. Luckily enough…
The eponymous academy around which The Atticus Institute revolves, as we are told early on (via ominous letters on the screen, an info-dump technique frequently employed by mockumentary and found footage films), was founded by Dr. Henry West (William Mapother, “I Origins”) in order to study “psi-related phenomena,” such as clairvoyance and telekinesis, until it…
