In the late 1990s, Egyptian born Mohammed Atta, whom it is believed was one of the pilots of the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, is reported to have established Islamist contact and formed a terrorist cell while a student in Hamburg, Germany. This fact has alerted the intelligence community in Hamburg…
Boyhood, Richard Linklater’s opus shot over a 12-year period, is utterly fantastic from start to finish. It’s a delicious slice of life about a boy from ages 6 to 18, and the spinning reality that is his life — complete with a caring mother, multiple stepfathers, a savvy sister, and a biological father who himself…
The Purge: Anarchy opens hours before the Annual Purge: The one night when all crime — including murder — is temporarily decriminalized. Americans all over the country either barricade themselves indoors to hide from the violence, or stockpile weapons in preparation of “purging the beast.” The film’s focal character Sergeant (Frank Grillo) falls into the…
In the battle of the 2014 Hercules flicks, Brett Ratner’s sly little smash-em-up, Hercules clearly emerges the victor over Renny Harlin’s unintentionally hilarious blunder, “The Legend of Hercules” from earlier in the year. This should come as no surprise to anyone who’s so much as glimpsed a shot from the cheapo origin pic or even…
If there is a mindset that is getting on my nerves more and more as it becomes steadily more prominent, it’s the idea that a work (especially a film) possessing a certain level of either style or ostentatiousness is in and of itself worthy of praise. It’s an ideology that gave the laughably atrocious 2002…
Suicide is no laughing matter. Neither is A Long Way Down, a movie that uses it as a jumping off point to bring together four people whose individual plights are supposed to draw sympathy and whose differences when combined are supposed to create laughable conflict. Of course, it’s not a comedy in the strictest sense,…
The Garrett Hedlund Dilemma: How To Avoid Outlaw Clichés and Maximize Potential. Does the above text currently exist? No, not yet it doesn’t — but the world of cinema may demand it by 2015. The opening scenes of Andrew Levitas’ feature debut, Lullaby, have Mr. Hedlund mirroring the roles of “On The Road” and “Inside…
