If the “Twilight” series had dialogue as witty and snappy as Beautiful Creatures, it would not be the target of so many jokes and eye rolls. Here we have another film with supernatural beings, but this time, we get witches and warlocks instead of vampires or zombies. There are teenagers involved; therefore, stay tuned for…
The tough guy renaissance is already drying up. The revival of macho 80s stars in action vehicles specifically designed to emulate the look and feel of the violent flicks these guys made a couple decades ago was never for everyone, but for a brief while, it was most certainly for me. Seeing Sylvester Stallone, Dolph…
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…
Last night the anticipated trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim was loosed on the internet. For me, it’s a bit of a letdown; what I see feels too damn similar to a mishmash of “Godzilla,” “The Big O” and “Battleship” right now. The hokey battle speech by Idris Elba doesn’t help much either. That…
The second trailer for Warner Bros. Man of Steel is a harrowing ordeal. It starts with Clark Kent being a lost soul — he has the internal drive to want to help but his adoptive father, Jonathan Kent, thinks otherwise. This conflict tears Clark apart during his formative years but it’s the perfect setup for…
Dare I say another fairy tale revisioning is coming to theaters in 2013? Okay, I’ll say it (just don’t accost me for doing so). Loosely based off of Jack and the Beanstalk comes Jack the Giant Slayer. The Warner Bros. movie uses most of the elements of the fairy tale — giants and a beanstalk…
Cloud Atlas is a challenge. It does not arrive as 99% of its film peers do, with a beginning, middle, and an end. Six different stories spanning over 500 years of time are woven together and make your mind work overtime not only keeping them apart, which is its job while you watch the film,…
