The cerebral time-travel thriller Counter Clockwise is quite a piece of work, with a punchy script and tight editing and direction, all set to an eerie score. If you enjoyed Shane Carruth’s “Primer,” take a gander at this one — it has all of the intriguing metaphysical concepts, but is a little easier to follow….
From its opening shot of a house both sleek and warm to its transcendent finale, Arrival arrests attention with a grasp that is firm yet ephemeral. It is a sublime and profound experience, touching its audience on an emotional, intellectual and spiritual level, a film that declares both its originality and its ancestry. And what…
Part family drama, part mystery, part slapstick comedy, and part mad-scientist movie, Men & Chicken is one of the most bizarre and original films I’ve seen. Writer and director Anders Thomas Jensen combines all those elements like a mad-scientist himself, conjuring up an absurd story full of grotesque characters, and translates it on-screen in an…
While watching the newest remake/reboot, this time of the classic 1984 comedy, “Ghostbusters,” I could not help but think that the lead stars of the first film (including Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Annie Potts, Sigourney Weaver and Ernie Hudson), who all make cameo appearances, could have been put to better use. Each plays a different…
It’s taken 30 years for the ghosts in Manhattan to regroup enough to be a concern so large that some had to call for the Ghostbusters again. Venkman, Spengler and Stantz have long since retired (although I’m sure they’ll make a surprise visit) so in this updated Ghostbusters, four women have accepted the call to…
It isn’t often that the landscape of a motion picture becomes as integral as the acting, writing or direction, but in the newest Ridley Scott (“Prometheus”) outer space adventure, The Martian, the planet’s crimson hues, frozen nights and horrifying sand/dust storms bring the story of an explorer stranded there with little help of survival to…
With film franchises rebooting every few years, it’s surprising that this series took so long to take the plunge. The first version, “Fantastic Four,” was released by 20th Century Fox in the summer of 2005, when critics called it, “’Spider-Man’ times four,” although at the time, I described it as “Spider-Man” *divided* by four, since…
