“You think I am waiting to die . . . But I am waiting to be found” — Samantha Reynolds In a mission from which they have little chance of returning, a group of condemned prisoners elect to undertake a voyage to the deepest regions of outer space to attempt to harness the energy of…
Avengers: Endgame brings the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s (MCU) third phase to a close in splendid fashion, designating much of its three-hour runtime to character arcs and the wider narrative, versus intergalactic fireworks and fisticuffs. In fact, Anthony and Joe Russo’s finale is an intelligent film, introducing novel MCU concepts, “hard” science and a supervillain worthy…
The special forces sub-genre combines elements of the cop, spy and soldier film, and is characterized by jargon, hardware, institutionalized yet independent characters and almost-but-not-quite overwhelming odds. Notable examples include “Tears of the Sun,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Triple Frontier” and “The Expendables” franchise. Given their practice of taking established generic traditions and infusing them with…
Somber is the mood in the first trailer for Avengers: Endgame and rightfully it should be. As you should recall, Thanos — after piecing together the Infinity Gauntlet — has eliminated half the population of Earth and decimated the ranks of the superhero team at the end of “Avengers: Infinity War.” The remaining Avengers and…
Damien Chazelle’s interpretation of the Apollo 11 moon landing is a visceral, emotive and carefully executed film, and a drastically different follow up to his Oscar-winning 2016 musical, “La La Land.” Based on strong source material from James R. Hansen, with a poignant score from frequent collaborator Justin Hurwitz and Chazelle’s celestial vision and tight…
Skrulls. Kree. Oh my! Earth being stuck in the middle of two alien races doing battle is bad, but adding Ronan the Destroyer (remember him from “Guardians of the Galaxy”?) into the mix makes the situation even worse. Luckily, we have Captain Marvel around to keep the fray from causing our untimely destruction. The film,…
2036 Origin Unknown, an obvious and rather ridiculous ripoff of “2001: A Space Odyssey” is aggressively dumb, purporting to be more for fans of science than fans of fiction, but really disappointing fans of both. It’s a time-consuming cure for insomnia, is what it is. It’s the year 2036 (duh). Mankind has replaced most of…
