The Iceman tells the story of Richard Kuklinski, a real-life Polish hit man who is believed to have killed over 100 people. He earned his nomenclature for the notoriously cold-blooded manner in which he exacted his murders, as well as his clever way of concealing the bodies by freezing them. When he was finally caught…
It’s been done, this whole alien taking over a human’s body thing in movies. It’s been done and done better. The concept goes back at least to the 1950s with “The Thing from Another World” and the original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Now, for the umpteenth time, we get the same premise — only…
U.S. Presidents have not always fared so well in Hollywood over the years. After all, Franchot Tone died of cancer in “Advise and Consent” (1962), Henry Fonda had to deal with the Reds blowing up everything in “Fail-Safe” (1964) and Fredric March was weakened and almost overthrown that same year in “Seven Days in May.”…
Jaded as I am regarding cinema of this sort, I have to admit that this newest release had me for about 75 percent of its short 95-minute running time. The conclusion, however, taken right from “The Silence of the Lambs,” left a bitter taste. Not enough to pan the entire enterprise, but well, there’s that…
If, as the famous line from “Love Story” says, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” then Alex (Gael García Bernal) and Nica (Hani Furstenberg), a young couple engaged to be married in a few months, are on the right track. Summer vacationing in the Caucasus Mountains in the Republic of Georgia, Julia Loktev’s…
With more than a passing nod to revenge action films like “The Driver” and “Shooter,” director Niels Arden Oplev (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” original 2009 Swedish-language version) has certainly crafted a gloomy, gritty, violent crime thriller, with some spot-on acting performances, but with a confusing, convoluted plot and a filmed at a deliberate…
If sci-fi movies have taught us anything, it’s that aliens tend to paint their allegiances in black and white. There’s no middle ground between the amiable charm of “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” and the acid-spewing nastiness of the vicious xenomorphs that terrorize the humans in “Alien.” Occupying each end of the spectrum, aliens tend to be…
