The danger and peril of Rudyard Kipling’s novels are combined with the iconic story from Disney’s 1967 animated version to created a vivid hybrid vision of The Jungle Book – one that was filmed entirely on sound stages in downtown L.A. (more…)
Review
MIDNIGHT SPECIAL Review: Imaginative Indie Sci-Fi
Director Jeff Nichols set himself a high bar to clear with 2012’s Mud, a movie that kickstarted the modern McConaissance while being a thrilling coming-of-age story. Mud‘s modern-day spin on Tom Sawyer ending up being one of my favourite movies of the past few years and rebooted Matthew McConaughey’s career in the process, announcing a great talent in Nichols. (more…)
BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE Review – Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing
A post 9/11 reactionary screed, a relentlessly grim superhero dust-up, an ad for the next 5 years’ worth of DC movies – the ungainly titled Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is all of these things and more, resulting in one of the weirdest and most off-putting blockbusters to escape the modern studio system in years. (more…)
10 CLOVERFIELD LANE Review: The Mystery Box Strikes Again
Geek overlord J.J. Abrams (shepherd of both the recent Star Trek and Star Wars revivals) gave a famous Ted Talk a few years ago which laid bare his storytelling ethos. Abrams asserts that a movie theatre is a “mystery box” where the infinite promise and hope of storytelling live, and the best way to experience that magic is to go in cold knowing as little as possible. (more…)
THE WITCH Review: A Deeply Unsettling Folk Tale
A Puritan family battles possibly paranormal forces in The Witch, a movie The Satanic Temple recently called “an official Satanic experience” and a harbinger of “a new Satanic era.” (more…)
THE NIGHT BEFORE Review: The Holidaze Go Up In Smoke
Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt re-team with their 50/50 writer-director Jonathan Levine for some drug-fueled holiday debauchery in The Night Before, a shaggy take on the tried-and-true A Christmas Carol template that injects some irreverence (and illicit substances) into a yuletide tale. (more…)
99 HOMES Review: The Horror of The Financial Collapse
The 2008 U.S. housing crisis becomes ground zero for the dissolution of The American Dream in the gripping econo-thriller 99 Homes. (more…)
DEADPOOL Review: Ryan Reynolds Gets His Superhero Franchise
It’s hard to believe that a character created by much-loathed 90s comic artist Rob Liefeld would lead to one of the better X-Men films yet. Harder still to believe is that Ryan Reynolds would get a chance to reprise this character after Deadpool was botched in 2009’s execrable X-Men Origins: Wolverine. (more…)
JOY Review: Miracle Mop Maker Gets A Scorsese-Lite Biopic
Ever the stylist, auteur David O. Russell manages to create arresting images in Joy, a fictionalized biopic loosely based on the life of Miracle Mop creator Joy Mangano. (more…)
HAIL, CAESAR! Review: The Coens Reloaded
Joel and Ethan Coen’s latest doesn’t hides its themes: it opens on a shot of a cross and follows a Hollywood fixer’s Sisyphean task to keep a bustling film studio in check as it churns out movies that are arguably worthwhile. (more…)
