It’s a well-known fact that most third installments of film franchises do not rise to the level of the first (and often the second). Now, these examples are subjective, of course, but I present as evidence the following pictures: “Rocky III,” “Superman III,” “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the…
For more than a decade, Edgar Wright has risen to become one the world’s more interesting filmmakers by innovating the action-comedy genre through homage and sharp satire with films like “Shaun of the Dead,” “Hot Fuzz” and “The World’s End.” Now Wright returns to bring his unique spin on the action-thriller genre. His foray, Baby…
It’s difficult to make a comedy these days without it devolving into either juvenile slapstick buffoonery or an ignorant vulgarity-laden vehicle for the nation’s lowest common denominators. It’s especially hard when such a film’s protagonist is so completely devoid of intelligence or even common sense as to be totally unrelatable and unsympathetic throughout. Oh, and…
As I have written before regarding movies of this ilk, the trick to any decent film featuring magic, or an element thereof, is to walk a tightrope between being just a bit smarter than the audience (or at least SOME members of it) and not being too accessible as to reveal too much to them….
It’s not easy being mean, err, I mean green. Actually, I can’t imagine either of them being particularly easy, even though both Constantine and Kermit the Frog carry both of them off as they were. Since 1955 (and more recently in 2011’s “The Muppets”) audiences have seen Kermit doing his ‘green’ thing; in Muppets Most…
They say everyone has a twin (or something along those lines) and that fact is at the heart of Disney’s new Muppet movie, Muppets Most Wanted. Kermit the Frog, we find, has a look alike — save for a birthmark on the right cheek — in Constantine, the worlds most elusive thief. Hilarity, as the…
He ain’t no penguin from “Madagascar,” but Surly sure has a few tricks up his sleeves (assuming, of course, he had sleeves to put something up). In Open Road Films’ The Nut Job, he’s a squirrel looking to pull off the heist of the century — robbing Maury’s Nut Store of all their almonds, pistachios,…
