Unless your name is James Nguyen (the man responsible for treasures like “Birdemic 2: The Resurrection”), it’s difficult to laugh at a terrible movie on a shoestring budget. The temptation is to look for the silver linings, the more admirable qualities of what, frankly, looks like a disaster in pixels. Who doesn’t want to be…
J. C. Chandor’s New York drama, A Most Violent Year, is a misleadingly titled film, as its timeframe only covers a month and there is very little physical violence. While the title references the exceptionally high crime rate of New York in 1981, the film itself is an intriguing study of different types of violence,…
The battle for man’s mind, body and soul has waged since the Garden of Eden and nearly as long on film. It’s not necessarily the easiest theme to convey properly but one infinitely easier to do well using martial arts as the catalyst. I’d gather this is one of the driving reasons Keanu Reeves, a…
Never trust an offshore gambling tycoon, no matter how golden his tongue may be. That’s the life lesson Richie Furst (Justin Timberlake) comes to understand the hard way after he gets lured into the fast-paced world of Ivan Block (Ben Affleck) in 20th Century Fox’s thriller Runner Runner. Supposedly inspired by true events (show me…
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…
Pitch to Hollywood studio stooge: “You see, I’ve got this idea to do a film about a real life event, except the film will only feature about ten minutes of the real life event, as a sort of ‘in’ to get the suckers to come and drop ten bucks. Meanwhile, what we’ll do is make…
