The Virtuoso, an edgy, slow-burn thriller directed by Nick Stagliano, hosts an impressive cast of pedigreed actors recognizable from a breadth of film and television appearances. We’re treated to Sir Anthony Hopkins, who, now acting in his 80s, has remarked that he’s having a lot of fun nowadays, choosing from a bin-load of scripts that…
After a long and difficult road for Martin Scorsese’s crime epic memoir, all the ingredients are present for a masterful piece of cinema. The talent includes eight Oscar winners: Director Scorsese, screenwriter Steven Zaillian, editor Thelma Schoonmaker, costume designer Sandy Powell, as well as four Oscar-winning performers — Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci…
Cold Blood, by writer-director Frédéric Petitjean, is the assemblage of a lot of good ideas that belong in different movies into one 90-minute feature that couldn’t possibly hope to explore them all properly. What we’re left with is the semblance of movie, the component parts of which are so at odds with each other that…
Caught between action flick thrills and hefty existential drama, Timothy Woodward Jr.’s film, Silencer, ends up in an unconvincing purgatory which neither excites or provokes. We open with a squad of US Marines in Iraq. It’s all radio banter and “Copy that!” and it looks like it’s been filmed with sunglasses over the lens, so…
Mexican cartels are bad and Emily Blunt is good. These are the main takeaways from the generic sequel Sicario: Day of the Soldado, which serves only as an overlong, unnecessary reminder of how gripping Denis Villeneuve’s 2015 predecessor was. This continuation of the story that follows government agents embroiled in the drug war jettisons Blunt’s…
The specter of 90s cinematic cool looms over every frame of Killing Gunther, a darkly comic mockumentary action movie about goofball criminals that kill for laughs. It’s like a lost relic from a time when everyone wanted to rip off Tarantino and when the fake documentary approach still felt fresh. It also semi-stars Arnold Schwarzenegger…
There are many variables transpiring in the gritty, yet grating, urban crime flick Proud Mary that want desperately to embrace themes of unconventional motherly instincts and clichéd street-wise mayhem. Unfortunately for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” Oscar-nominated star Taraji P. Henson (who also has an executive producing credit for this lopsided actioner), her labored…
