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…
Feeling very much like a a mix of “Gladiator” and “Clash of the Titans,” Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Paramount Pictures presents the first full trailer for Hercules. In it Hercules (played by everyone’s favorite wrestler turned actor, Dwayne Johnson) just wants to be left alone and care for his family. Unfortunately for the man who just so…
Part good. Part bad. All modern. RoboCop, everyone’s favorite cinematic cyborg do-gooder, returns to the big screen after a 21-year absence, now in a shiny, sanitized package that smartly brings the character into our post-9/11 reality only to malfunction halfway through by blandly defanging the franchise’s satirical bite. The opening chunk of José Padilha’s 2014…
Even bearing in mind that this film was always going to be fighting the uphill battle of the “middle film” curse, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug still didn’t quite live up to expectations. Perhaps it’s because “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” — Peter Jackson’s last “middle film”, from The Lord of…
I’m beginning to think that by adding Samuel L. Jackson to their fantasy/science-fictiony superhero-ish flicks, movie producers think an automatic hit will be generated. It is the only way I can explain why Mr. Jackson is in every one of these movie types these days. It also explains why he is front and center in…
Because no one knows Sissy Spacek. That’s the reason Carrie, the classic movie of what happens when bullying meets a hormonal telekinetic, was remade for audiences of 2013. Not because the 1970’s version by Brian De Palma had open, irritable flaws that diminished the Stephen King novel from which it was adapted that needed to…
While I certainly enjoyed the first trailer for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, I like the second one even more. Warner Bros. and crew have raised the ante with this trailer, hinting at alliances and double-crosses, hidden adorations and resentments, and of course fantastical conflicts waged within a finely crafted world. As the dwarves,…
