Arnold is back — and he’s bitter. And so is the script for The Last Stand. After two terms as governor of “Cally-fornia,” as well as bit parts in a few movies here and there, Arnold Schwarzenegger has finally returned to his above-title billing as the action hero we’ve come to expect: The lone wolf…
Some years ago I learned 1930s and ’40s era gangsters learned to talk “gangster” from the motion pictures. James Cagney probably had more to do with coining gangster lingo and slang than John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, and Al Capone combined. Gangster Squad gets the clothes right, does a decent job with 1949 era Los…
A cinematic peek behind the curtain of the raid that ended with Osama Bin Laden’s assassination in May 2011 is certainly an intriguing hook for a movie, but it’s far from the whole story that unfolds in Kathryn Bigelow’s tense, taut thriller Zero Dark Thirty. Achieving intimacy in this gigantic narrative about a decade-long manhunt…
Take some of his more familiar action vehicles (“Minority Report,” “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” etc.) and add a dash of Bourne, “The Shooter” and even “JFK,” and you have a Tom Cruise film that, while certainly not his best, is quite effective, entertaining and keeps the suspense simmering until the last bullet has been…
On paper, Bait 3D sounds like a hoot and a half. After all, the film was co-written and produced by B-movie extraordinaire Russell Mulcahy, and it’s about a supermarket which gets flooded during a tsunami and invaded by sharks. Alas, however, this Australian-produced shark thriller is underwhelming. Only occasionally showing signs of goodness, the picture…
Just when you’ve thought you’d seen all there was to see about zombies, along comes a movie like World War Z. Based off of the novel, “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War” by Max Brooks, zombies are not the solitary creatures easily shot or stabbed. Now they act together as a…
Your heart races and the hairs on your arm rise during the requisite action set piece preceding every Bond opening credit roll. Just admit it. In the case of Skyfall, it’s a foot race and a motorcycle chase through the streets and rooftops of Istanbul that culminate on the top of a high speed train…
