So long as Peter Jackson continues to get motion capture right with his LOTR and Hobbit films, other directors will continue to try to employ it. Such is the case with Reinhard Klooss and his upcoming film, Tarzan. It is probably not the best choice to use it, but he nevertheless does, mixing in elements…
Having survived the 74th Annual Hunger Games on their terms in “The Hunger Games,” Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence, “Silver Linings Playbook”) and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson, “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island”) are national heroes. As we find in the second installment, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, however, this new found fame…
One man’s harrowing journey through a personalized hell has been the focus of each of Steve McQueen’s three features, but never has the metaphor been so effectively explored by the filmmaker as it is in his deeply moving fact-based drama 12 Years a Slave. McQueen’s penchant for precisely pointed perspective is applied again here, but…
Poet and naturalist Diane Ackerman said, “The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one’s curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun struck hills every day.” One such high-spirited thoroughbred is Australian naturalist Robyn Davidson who, at the age of…
During a press conference promoting the newest release, Ender’s Game, directed by Gavin Hood (“X-Men Origins: Wolverine“), veteran actor Harrison Ford (“Paranoia”) compared the special effects technology from the “Star Wars” franchise in 1977 to this current production. “Back then, we would put together a plastic model out of car and boat parts, put it…
Because no one knows Sissy Spacek. That’s the reason Carrie, the classic movie of what happens when bullying meets a hormonal telekinetic, was remade for audiences of 2013. Not because the 1970’s version by Brian De Palma had open, irritable flaws that diminished the Stephen King novel from which it was adapted that needed to…
Based on true events, Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips is the rarest of thrillers, the kind that relies on neither distracting special effects nor circumspect character development. Driven by a powerful, soul-baring performance by the inimitable Tom Hanks, the movie never lags, never oversells the plight of its characters and never reduces anyone or anything to…
