Once upon a time, back in the Light Ages of Hollywood genre filmmaking (aka the 80s), the ancient fantasy picture was a thing of popular beauty. They weren’t all classics, but the memorable likes of “Conan the Barbarian,” “The Beastmaster,” “Willow,” “The Princess Bride,” “Legend,” “The Neverending Story,” “Dragonslayer,” “The Last Unicorn,” and “The Dark…
With each successive movie, Andy and Lana Wachowski prove that their imagination is practically unrivalled in Hollywood and that their awesome ability to bring that imagination to lush, limitless life puts them in the company of cinema’s greatest modern magicians. So it seems only fair that when the sibling team takes on the space opera…
The tragic decay of a brilliant woman’s mind is given a gentle, poignant examination in Still Alice, a deeply moving and beautifully minimalized drama that sweetly takes the high road and finds in its protagonist’s struggle room for love and courage. Adapted from the novel by Lisa Genova and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash…
A good comic book property can’t sit idle for long, nor should it. Having waited an eternity (eight years) 20th Century Fox is finally poised to forget about 2007’s “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer” and reboot their family of superheroes with The Fantastic Four. Unfortunately, much of it appears to be an origin…
There is a sub-genre of the war film that focuses on those away from combat. These films do not display the horrors of warfare or the camaraderie of men under fire, but instead the dramas of those left behind or serving their country behind the lines. Such a film is Testament of Youth, based on…
The great African-American poet Langston Hughes in his poem, “As I Grew Older” asks us to help him find his dream. “Help me to shatter this darkness,” he asks “to smash this night, to break this shadow into a thousand lights of sun, into a thousand whirling dreams of sun.” Though for many minorities, the…
It’s hard to say how much art there is in imitation, but Angelina Jolie certainly apes the old-fashioned Hollywood tear-jerking biopic like the best of them. Whatever that’s worth is where the debate lies in Unbroken, Jolie’s second feature-length directorial effort and a true story of a triumphing American if ever there was one. A…
