From the premise that all extra-terrestrial life is harmful comes Life, a combination of “Alien,” “The Thing,” “Gravity,” “The Mummy” and a few other trapped-in-space or alien-assimilation movies that we all know and love (or tolerate in some cases). Life is the story of the six-member crew of the International Space Station who, while orbiting…
Over two decades ago, the British film scene was drastically up-rooted and challenged by the likes of an ambitious, dangerously addictive film centered on a closely knit group of Scottish junkies. That, and dead head-twisting babies crawling on ceilings. Danny Boyle’s on-screen adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s “Trainspotting” was a definite first in venturing into explicit…
Paul Verhoeven is back with more scratchy sexual politics, darkly comic innuendos, and harshly nasty violence. First things first, the most joyous part of that sentence is the beginning. Paul Verhoeven is back. Not back to Hollywood, of course, which he left nearly 17 years ago after the dismal response to his schlocky invisibility thriller…
Passengers, the newest Sony Pictures (Village Roadshow) release, directed by Morten Tyldum (“The Imitation Game”), is a visually stunning outer space adventure with a very good cast (Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt, Michael Sheen, Andy Garcia and Laurence Fishburne) that fails to lift off due to an earth-bound, cliché-ridden script. That last item can be blamed…
Sometimes gripping narratives detailing the familiar plight of teen girls do not necessarily have to be about the adversity of choice such as pregnancy, alcoholism, prostitution, domestic abuse, illiteracy or homelessness. There are youthful feminine coming-of-age stories that feel equally captivating in inspiration, determination and the spirit of competition and tradition. In filmmaker Otto Bell’s…
A confusing, convoluted plot, Ron Howard’s uninspired direction and less than stellar acting mar Inferno, the third installment of the popular (at least as far as book sales go) “Da Vinci Code” franchise, but then again, we all know about some of the third-film duds in cinematic history (“Superman 3,” “Rocky 3,” “The Hangover Part…
Crimson petals. Red rose. Scarlet sheets. Silk shirt. That’s Julieta’s torso, moving with a breath of agony as she packs her stuff. When we finally see her face, we see the evened eyes of long held pain, the kind that leaves deep-carved scars in what seems to be a life-long depression. It would not be…
